Moneeza Hashmi row: Facing flak, I&B officials try to find where the fault lies

This oft-quoted couplet by legendary Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz – meaning she has taken offence at something that did not even figure in the tale – may well sum up the response of officials over the insinuation that the government did not allow Faiz’s daughter, Pakistani national Moneeza Hashmi, entry into an event in Delhi after she was invited to speak.

Hashmi was supposed to speak on ‘Should all good stories be commercially successful?’ at the Asia Media Summit, co-hosted by the information and broadcasting ministry along with Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD).

However, she did not get to speak at the event. The controversy erupted after Hashmi’s son took to Twitter to question his mother’s “humiliation”. Smriti Irani’s removal from the I&B ministry may have been a fallout of this row.


AIBD was in charge of speakers and it delayed finalising participants, leading to a lot of confusion, people aware of the matter said. A query emailed by ET to AIBD did not elicit any response. Those coordinating the event from the ministry said there had been no reply from the AIBD on Hashmi’s claims and that they were checking as to what went wrong.