Aam Aadmi party convener Arvind Kejriwal will be speaking at Wharton India Economic Forum after the organisers cancelled their invitation toGujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modito deliver a keynote address later this month.
Gautam Adani
A dani Group chairman and Shiv Sena leader Suresh Prabhu have called off their participation in the event following the snub to Modi.

Kejriwal said he had received an invitation to speak at the prestigious event some 10 days ago and would address the audience via a video-link.

An Adani Group spokesperson said, Adani had conveyed his inability to participate in the event about a fortnight ago due to other pressing engagements, delinking his decision to the cancellation of invitation to the BJP strongman.

Adani Group, seen as close to the Gujarat government, has also withdrawn its sponsorship of the event. The organisers confirmed the development only on Monday. The withdrawal of sponsorship is apparently an outcome of Wharton’s snub to Modi.

Prabhu made it clear that he has cancelled his trip to the American university as a mark of protest against its decision to withdraw its invite to Modi.

“It was Wharton which invited him, he did not ask that he be invited,” he said. If they are calling off the invite now, it is not only an insult to Modi but to the entire country, he added. “He is a democratically elected leader and has not been foisted on anybody,” he told MAIL TODAY.

Prabhu, who was a cabinet minister in the NDA government, said he had been a regular speaker at universities across the world, including the US, Japan, Singapore and the Middle East and found the decision to cancel the invite to Modi ridiculous.

Modi was scheduled to deliver his address via video-conference on March 22-23 and the organisers said they feared polarising opinions among alumni, students and their supporters “which might put Modi in a compromising position, which we would like to avoid at all costs, especially in the spirit of our conference’s purpose”.

The turnaround was caused by a petition filed with organisers by three Indian-American teachers, who have been vocal in their criticism of Modi’s alleged role in 2002 riots and demanded that US government not give him a visa. They were supported by a number of other teachers and students.

There have been efforts of late to whitewash Modi’s grim record and to grant him international respectability, the petitioners said. Wharton’s invitation lends itself to doing just that, they argued, asking organisers to revoke their invitation to him. Meanwhile writer Chetan Bhagat has slammed Wharton.

“Dear Wharton, the country you belong to routinely makes friends with dictators and military govts who used guns to be in power. Remember that”, Bhagat wrote in his Twitter handle.