By-invitation-only meet to have roughly 18,000 attendees.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, will address around 18,000 members of the Indian Diaspora and guests at a reception being organized at the Madison Square Garden (MSG) in Manhattan, on Sunday, September 28th, at 12 p.m. The speech will be preceded by a grand cultural program.
The by-invitation only event is going to cost a whopping $1.5 million, as of estimates now, of which $500,000 will be the rent for the venue, and an additional $300,000 for the security at the MSG, a top official who is coordinating the event, told The American Bazaar in an exclusive interview, on condition of anonymity.
The money will be raised by the community through private sponsorships, although MSG has strict rules on how much money can be raised for such events, through business entities. Not more than $50,000 can be collected from a business entity.
A nonprofit, Indian American Community Foundation, incorporated in New Jersey, will spearhead the efforts. Dr. Bharat Barai, a physician who is also the chairman of the Medical Board in Indiana, and a close confidante of Modi, is the coordinator of the mega event.
This foundation was recently registered to provide non-political, non-religious, community based platform to facilitate participation in this program for Modi by various Indian American organizations in the US. According to the source, the foundation has been created only for the purpose of the Modi meet.
“It would have a “sunrise and sunset”, according to the source. It would cease to be, once the Modi visit is over. If extra funds are collected by the Foundation, then the money would go to a charity, the name of which has been withheld.
A website, www.pmvisit.com is also being set up. A souvenir will also be published in connection with the event.
Private donors will get a limited number of free tickets, but the emphasis is going to be screening individuals who want to attend the meet, while ensuring fair and equitable allocation of tickets, according to the source, who emphasized that everybody attending will be screened as they don’t want “troublemakers”.
All the Indian consulates in the US are going to be asked to provide names of bonafide Indian American organizations, and then certain number of tickets would be allocated to them. Ten percent of the tickets of the around 18,000 invitations would be reserved for guests like Senators and congressmen, as well as leaders from the academic and business world.
Two meetings were held at the Indian Consulate in New York on Sunday – one a core-committee meeting of eight and the other a meeting of an advisory committee consisting of 31 community leaders from across the country.
In attendance at these meetings were also the Indian Ambassador to the United States, S Jaishankar, the Consul General of India in New York Dnyaneshwar Mulay, a Joint Secretary from the Prime Minister’s Office Bharat Lal, and Ram Madhav, Director of India Foundation in New Delhi.
Community leaders who attended included the Indian American Political Forum President Sampat Shivangi, GOPIO founding chairman and president Thomas Abraham. Ashok Mago from Dallas, MR Rangaswami of Indiaspora, and Benoy Thomas and Renu Misra from Washington, DC.
At the meeting, it was made clear by the Indian officials present that the MSG event will not be an Indian Embassy or Indian Consulate event; it would be a community event, the ambassador told the advisory committee. The advisory committee’s role would be to raise money for the event and mobilize people.
Efforts are being made to make it an inclusive event, as the presence of Christian and Muslim leaders on the committee shows. Modi has clearly told officials in the US and to Bharai that he does not want it to be seen as a meet pandering to only the Gujarati community.
Jaisankar also told the attendees present that Modi will not address the Joint Session of Congress, for which a petition has been gaining traction.
(Sujeet Rajan is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Bazaar)