An Indian magazine claims that Canada’s Prime Minister’s Office withdrew the publication’s invitation to a New Delhi dinner reception because of its recent criticism of Justin Trudeau.
Outlook, one of India’s most popular English-language news and current affairs magazines, shared this image of an invitation extended to its foreign editor Pranay Sharma to attend a dinner reception hosted by the high commissioner of Canada on Thursday.
The invitation was revoked just an hour before the event, Outlook reported, with the PMO explaining that it had been issued in error. But Outlook claims that an Indian official admitted that he was instructed to withdraw Sharma’s invite specifically because of his publication’s Feb. 12, 2018 issue with the cover title “Khalistan-II: Made in Canada.”
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“Khalistan” refers to the Sikh ethnostate that separatists want to create in India’s Punjab state. The Feb. 12 issue contained several articles that were scathingly critical of the Trudeau cabinet, and accused the Canadian government of nurturing Sikh extremists.
Outlook took Trudeau to task, saying that he is “feted the world over as the new face of ‘liberalism'” but seemed to “find it difficult to accommodate critical media coverage.”
Global News has reached out to the PMO for comment.
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This isn’t the first invitation snafu to arise from Trudeau’s time in India.
Jaspal Atwal, a man who was convicted of attempting to murder an Indian cabinet minister on Vancouver Island and was called a “terrorist” by a Canadian judge, received an invitation to the same dinner reception before it was rescinded after Canadian media got wind of it.