Top leaders land, some chartered flights cancelled
NAGPUR: Many top leaders flew in to attend the wedding of Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s daughter Ketki in Nagpur on Sunday even as the proposed visit of several others for the ceremony was cancelled.
The office of Gadkari, the Union minister for transport and shipping, said only 12 chartered planes ferried VVIPs for the wedding. Nagpur airport authority sources said at least 28 chartered planes from diverse locations landed at the airport till 5 pm on Sunday.
“Some of the chartered flights expected were cancelled at the eleventh hour,” said a source at the airport who did not want to be named, as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
On HT’s story that 50 chartered planes were to ferry VVIPs for his daughter’s wedding, Gadkari told HT, “Barely 10 to 12 chartered planes landed in Nagpur for attending Ketki’s marriage.”
Earlier, Manoj Wadekar, additional private secretary of Gadkari, had said the news of 50 chartered flights to ferry VIPs for the event was mischievous, misleading, factually incorrect and highly speculative.
According to a source with knowledge of the wedding details, chief ministers of at least four states were among the bigwigs whose plans to attend the event were cancelled. “Most of them are expected to attend the marriage reception in Delhi on December 8,” the source added.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, BJP president Amit Shah, Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu, Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and yoga guru Ramdev turned up for the wedding.
Union ministers Maneka Gandhi, Prakash Javadekar and Hansraj Ahir, and former civil aviation minister Praful Patel too were among the guests at the wedding along with Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena president Raj Thackeray.
While the Union home minister, and BJP president arrived on Sunday morning, Fadnavis landed here last night. Ketki, the youngest of Gadkari’s three children — both his sons are married — tied the knot with Aditya, the son of Sandhya and Ravindra Kaskhedikar of Nagpur. Aditya works with Facebook in the US.