Mohali, Jan 10: India's star batter Virat Kohli will miss the first T20 International against Afghanistan owing to "personal reasons", head coach Rahul Dravid said here on Wednesday.

Virat miss the game tomorrow due to personal reasons, Dravid said at the start of the media interaction.

The former India captain will be available for the next two matches of the three-match series, Dravid said, adding, "Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma will be opening the innings" for India in the series opener on Thursday.

Both Rohit and Kohli are returning to the T20 format after 14 months.

Kohli last played in the shortest format in November 2022, his last game being India's semifinal loss to England during the T20 World Cup in Australia.

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Patna (PTI): BJP president Nitin Nabin on Wednesday launched a blistering attack on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, accusing him of undertaking foreign visits without informing central security agencies, and having close links with “anti-India and pro-Pakistan” elements.

Nabin charged Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition, with being on a “compromised mission” that began with his great grandfather and first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and “continued through generations”.

The BJP president’s comments come amid a row over the Indian Youth Congress activists staging a shirtless protest at the AI Summit in Delhi last week, with the slogan “PM is compromised”, an allusion to the proposed trade deal with the US allegedly under pressure from the Donald Trump administration

“Today, I wish to expose the compromised mission of the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has traded national interests for personal gains. I wish to expose Rahul Gandhi, who is trutting about like a babbar sher (lion),” the 45-year-old Bihar MLA, who was made the BJP president a month ago, told reporters.

Nabin raked up Nehru’s alleged reference to the country’s burgeoning population as a “liability” and the defeat in the 1962 war with China, and charged Indira Gandhi with “giving up Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, after defeating Pakistan in 1971” as examples of the “compromised mission”.

He also alleged that Rajiv Gandhi, the father of Rahul and a former Prime Minister, had made use of the Bofors gun deal to “fatten up his personal bank balance”.

“The compromised mission continued under Rahul’s mother Sonia Gandhi, who functioned as a ‘super prime minister’ from 2004 to 2014, compromising the authority of the top constitutional post,” the BJP president asserted.

Nabin slammed Rahul Gandhi for “undertaking 247 foreign visits, without informing security agencies back home”.

“All this has been a part of Rahul Gandhi’s compromised mission,” said Nabin who also accused the Rae Bareli MP of having close links with “anti-India, pro-Pakistan and China” elements abroad, including billionaire George Soros, US Congress member Ilhan Omar and Kenyan financier Shakir Merali.

“Rahul Gandhi is a poster boy of negative politics. But the people of the country, especially the youth, have seen through his game and they will not be misled by his rhetoric,” Nabin added.