MYSURU: The inconvenience road users face in the wake of the visit of a high-profile dignitary to their city paled before what a Mysuru family underwent ahead of the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the cultural capital of Karnataka on Sunday, for they had to advance a long-planned wedding reception at a short notice.
The family, which is into jewellery business, was ‘requested’ by Hotel Radisson Blu, where the Prime Minister will stay tonight (Sunday night) ahead of various programmes he is scheduled to grace on Monday, to change the reception time from 7.30pm to 12.30pm.
It was a result of the mandatory recce of the special protection group (SPG), responsible for the PM’s security arrangements, that the hotel management purportedly advised the parents of the couple who were to tie the knot to advance the event. A guest said that while the family had booked the hotel two months ago, they were asked to make the change ‘in the last minute’. “The hotel hastily informed them of the change of plans via an SMS,” the guest said.
“Gentle reminder,” the SMS that The New Indian Express accessed, began, and went on to read, “The wedding reception of Kavya and Tejas has been rescheduled to 12.30pm on Feb 18, 2018, due to security concerns at Hotel Radisson Blu in the evening with anticipation of Sri Narendra Modi’s arrival.” The original invite requested guests to be there by 7.30 pm for the reception and for dinner thereafter.
“As if coping with the hassles of rescheduling an event as big as this was not enough, we also had to put up with the difficulties of the hotel being flooded with cops, guests being frisked and vehicles not being allowed to be stopped in the portico just to drop guests,” the guest said.
The hotel, though, did its best to make things easy for the family by letting them use its facilities till 3.30pm after the early wedding. And, the hotel management relocated guests of the wedding party by arranging 35 room bookings in another star hotel. The management refused to detail the turn of events. “It is an internal issue” is all they said.
Lalitha Mahal Palace, on the other hand, refused the request of SPG to host the PM, saying it could not make last-minute changes to programmes fixed long ago, according to a source.