NEW DELHI: When diplomacy fails, business interests succeed. With increasing tension with Pakistan
and complete breakdown of talks between the two neighbours, India’s steel magnet Sajjan Jindal has been making efforts to bring back leadership of two countries on the discussion table.
After Sajjan’s last week’s secret meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to convey message from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, industrialist is expected to see Sharif again next month to initiate dialogue between the two nations.
But before last week’s meeting could work out something, Pakistan’s extremely powerful military carried out BAT action on the border by beheading two Indian soldiers. Military establishment here in South Block maintain that brutal killing of two Indian soldiers was carried by Pakistani army with a calculative strategy to derail any talks between the two countries.
Sajjan Jindal, has business ties with Sharif’s family as his company in business dealings with the Ittefaq Group of Industries, a Pakistani integrated steel producer with major operations in Punjab, which was founded by industrialist Muhammad Sharif, father of Nawaz Sharif. Nawaz Sharif’s nephew is managing the business on his behalf.
Sources claim that frequent visits of Sajjan Jindal to Islamabad are aimed to push to obtain the “right of way” from Pakistan government to transport iron ore by road from Hajigak iron ore deposits in the Bamian, Afghanistan, to Karachi. From the Pakistani port, the ore was aimed to be shipped to western and southern parts of India.
As per 2011 agreement between India and Pakistan, Sajjan’s JSW and Naveen’s Jindal Steel and Power Limited, who are part of a consortium led by state-owned SAIL, along with Monnet Ispat and AFISCO (Afghan Iron), would construct a 1-million-tonne-a-year steel mill and develop the 1.8-billion-tonne iron-ore reserves at Hajigak.
Relations between Jindal and Nawaz Sharif came out in public domain after Jindal was part of a three-member Indian delegation which met with Sharif in the hill station of Murree, just outside Islamabad with PM Narendra Modi in 2015 December, when PM Modi was on his way back from Kabul.
In fact, when Sharif came to India for the swearing-in ceremony of the newly elected National Democratic Alliance government in May 2014 on invitation of PM Modi, he had attended a tea party hosted by Jindal. In fact, he was instrumental in organising Modi and Sharif meeting in Kathmandu on the sidelines of SAARC in November 2014.