BJP leaders refuse lunch with PM

New Delhi, Jul 23 (PTI) Top learders of India's main
Opposition party BJP Friday refused to lunch with Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, angered by CBI summons to a Minister
of Gujarat state ruled by the party regarded as very close to
its Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Hours before the lunch to be hosted by Singh for Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari, senior leader L K
Advani and Leaders of Opposition in both Houses of Indian
Parliament Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, the party called it
off.
Advani, who was to go along with the other three for the
lunch ahead of the Parliament session beginning Monday, called
Leader of House in Lok Sabha (Lower House of Indian
Parliament) Pranab Mukherjee and expressed his inability to
attend the lunch. Later the PMO was also intimated.
The four leaders, who had accepted the lunch invitation,
met Thursday evening and decided that they would not honour it
since the "environment was not cordial", Swaraj told a press
conference Friday after a meeting of leaders at Advani's
residence.
The atmosphere had become so vitiated that it would not
appear well to go and have lunch with him, she said.
Swaraj and Jaitley lashed out at the government accusing
it of "unashamedly misusing" Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI) for political purposes. They said the entire
investigation in the Sohrabuddin encounter killing case, in
which Home Minister of Gujarat state in west India Amit Shah
has been summoned, was "motivated with a political agenda in
mind and was concocted". (MORE) PTI