Former Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) MP Janaka Tissakuttiarachchi has said that MP Namal Rajapaksa’s visit to India is not being undertaken on the basis of an official invitation from the Indian Government.

In a post on his Facebook page, Tissakuttiarachchi stated that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not extended an invitation to Rajapaksa. Instead, he claimed that the invitation had come from an educational institution in the Indian state of Odisha, which reportedly has the capacity to provide education to around 40,000 students at a time.

According to Tissakuttiarachchi, the invitation was extended with the intention of presenting Namal Rajapaksa as a role model to students studying at the institution.