Guests at Mani Shankar Aiyar dinner deny Gujarat elections were discussed with Pakistani leaders

PM Modi raised the issue of the dinner thrown by Mani Shankar Aiyar and suggested that the Congress was conspiring with Pakistani leaders to prevent the BJP from winning the election in Gujarat, where the party has been in power for 22 years, media reported.

Mani Shankar Aiyar, now suspended by his party for his 'neech aadmi' remark, hosted a dinner last week for former Pakistan Foreign Affairs Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri's visit, where former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former Vice President Hamid Ansari,  Pakistan High Commissioner, former foreign minister K Natwar Singh, former Army Chief Deepak Kapoor, former diplomats Salman Haider, Satinder Lambah, TCA Raghavan, Sharat Sabharwal, Chinmaya Gharekhan and senior journalists including Prem Shankar Jha and Rahul Khushwant Singh were among the invitees present.

Chinmaya Gharekhan told NDTV, "It was entirely devoted to talking about relations between India and Pakistan. Inevitably, cross-border terrorism came up and Kashmir came up but no one, I am 100 per cent sure, not a single person talked about either Gujarat elections or the domestic situation in India or for that matter, the domestic situation in Pakistan."

Meanwhile in a tweet on Monday, Pakistan's spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr Mohammad Faisal, said, "India should stop dragging Pakistan into its electoral debate and win victories on own strength rather than fabricated conspiracies, which are utterly baseless and irresponsible."

The Congress has demanded an apology for the charge, media reported.

Rahul Gandhi, commenting on the PM's allegations, said that Prime Minister Modi needs to talk about Gujarat and not Pakistan. He also said that the PM talks about the Congress in half of his speeches, media reports said.

Veteran Congress leader P Chidambaram tweeted, "Is winning an election so important that such allegations can be made against a former Prime Minister and a former Vice President?"

However, India's Law Minister, on Monday not only condemned the "unwarranted" statement by Pakistan on Gujarat elections but also said that that it was aimed at bailing out Congress party, according to media reports.