New York: Madison Square Garden is all set to host Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi today. Fans, supporters are making a beeline for his address.
Modi will address a gathering of around 20,000 people here, which will be broadcast live to crowds in 20 other cities in the United States today, turning his first visit as Prime Minister there into a show of his popularity.
The speech is slated to begin at 11am local time, which would be about 8:30pm in India.
Former Prime Ministers Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh have addressed people of Indian origin and NRIs mostly in hotel ballrooms, with a few hundred in attendance. But Modi's show will be unprecedented in its scale and political message.
Madison Square Garden, an indoor stadium in midtown Manhattan, can accommodate 20,000 people. The Madison Square Garden is also home to New York Rangers ice-hockey team and the Knicks basketball team. It has also been the venue for several concerts, including those by Michael Jackson and U2. Two National Democratic Party Conventions have also been conducted here.
In the run-up to parliamentary elections in May this year, Modi routinely drew hundreds of thousands to his rallies throughout India. Thousands even showed up to see him speak as a holographic image.
Modi was denied a visitor's visa by the US government in 2005 for not taking effective steps to stop religious riots that broke out in 2002 in Gujarat when he was the chief minister of the western state. But after Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stormed to the power at Centre, US put the visa issue to rest by extending an invitation to him to visit Washington.
