PM Modi's surprise Pakistan visit takes Twitter by surprise

Modi will be the first Indian prime minister to visit Pakistan since Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit in 2004

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi set off a minor political tremor Friday afternoon when he tweeted that he would meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Lahore on his way back from Kabul. 

The hastily announced stopover also meant that Modi is now the first Indian prime minister to visit Pakistan since Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 2004 visit. Incidentally, December 25 is also Vajpayee’s birthday, now celebrated in India as Good Governance Day. 

The visit, which comes days after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Pakistan for the 'Heart of Asia' conference, evinced differing reactions across the political spectrum.  

On Twitter, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah described the re-engagement between Pakistan and India as a welcome development. However, he cautioned that “consistency” was more important than “grand gestures". 

Abdullah also hit out at the Jammu and Kashmir government and tweeted that he was waiting for the government to claim that Mufti Syed had forced Modi to visit Lahore. 

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj praised the move on Twitter and described Modi’s decision as being statesman-like. She added that this was exactly the sort of relations two neighboring countries should have. 

Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha said that he was waiting for BJP-ally Shiv Sena’s reaction on Modi’s visit. Jha, alleging that Modi had gone to Pakistan to celebrate Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s birthday, also asked where the RSS was in all of this. Jha ended his series of tweets by saying that Modi had taken his “chai pe charcha farce too far”.

Congress leader Manish Tewari criticised the surprise visit in a series of tweets. Calling the visit a “misadventure”, Tewari referred to the Kargil war which followed then Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore. 

  

He also alleged that a “steel oligarch”, who allegedly brokered a meeting between Modi and Sharif in Thimpu, was also in Lahore today. 

NDTV’s Barkha Dutt, who called the move a “master stroke”, also claimed that Sajjan Jindal, chairman and managing director of steelmaker JSW Group, was also in Lahore.