New Delhi: After the Chinese FM visit to India, Prime Minister of Nepal Sher Bahadur Deuba is all set to visit New Delhi from April 1-3, government sources said on Saturday. Deuba's visit comes on the heels of an invitation by his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, which the Nepali leader has accepted.
The visit will commence right after Chinese FM Wang Yi concludes his three-day visit to the Himalayan nation on March 27. He will be meeting PM Modi on 2 April. Besides official engagements, he will be visiting Varanasi, sources said. This will be Deuba's first bilateral visit abroad after becoming Prime Minister in July 2021. He has visited India in each of his four earlier stints as PM. The most recent visit in his capacity as PM was in 2017.
This visit is in the tradition of periodic high-level exchanges between the two countries. It would allow both sides to review the entire gamut of bilateral relations including development and economic partnership, trade, cooperation in the health sector, power, connectivity, people-to-people links, and other issues of mutual interest.
Earlier in January, Deuba was scheduled to visit India to participate in a business summit in Gujarat. But the trip was canceled after the summit was postponed in the wake of Covid19. EAM Jaishankar also visited Kathmandu in August 2019 to take part in the fifth Indo-Nepal joint commission meeting. In November 2020, Indian FS Shringla also arrived in Kathmandu as an introductory visit.
During Oli's tenure amid the political crisis in Nepal, the India-Nepal relations have been at a low after some of his statements. Therefore, this visit by Deuba can be expected to further improve the strained ties between the two nations.
