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Rahul Mahajan in focus again

Rahul Mahajan, the headline-grabbing son of late Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) leader Pramod Mahajan, married Tuesday - a ceremony that once again became a media event and drew several political leaders to the city.

Rahul, who was arrested for suspected drug abuse in June and then released on bail, married airline pilot Shweta Singh. His choice, the family said, was approved by his late father who was one of BJP's stalwarts at the time of his sudden death.

The simple, traditional ceremony that took place at 11.30 a.m. at a banquet hall in Worli in south-central Mumbai, comes less

than four months after Pramod Mahajan died of gunshot injuries inflicted by his brother Pravin.

The event was covered live by many TV networks who have been trailing the 31-year-old Rahul ever since his father's death and his subsequent arrest after an alleged drug-laced party at his late father's Delhi bungalow barely a month after his death.

Several bigwigs, including union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah as well as industrialists Anil Ambani and Rahul Bajaj, attended the function.

The BJP was represented by L.K. Advani, Venkaiah Naidu, Ananth Kumar, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Kalraj Mishra and Smriti Irani apart from Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray.

Former deputy chief minister and BJP leader Gopinath Munde, who is married to Pramod Mahajan's sister Pradnya, greeted the guests along with Rahul's mother Rekha and sister Poonam.

"The wedding ceremony was kept simple in the wake of the recent death of Pramod Mahajan, the subsequent arrest of Pravin and the arrest of Rahul in a drug abuse case," said senior BJP leader Ganesh Hake.

posted by News India @ 11:05 PM