JOIN USPrime Minister Narendra will host his Nepalese counterpart Sher Bahadur Deuba next week, as India plans a series of engagements with neighbouring South Asian nations amid escalating tension with China.
Deuba will arrive in New Delhi on Wednesday to commence his five-day visit to India. This is his first official visit to India after taking over as prime minister of Nepal on June 7. Apart from meeting Modi, the Nepalese prime minister will also call on President Ram Nath Kovind, sources told DH.
New Delhi has also lined up a series of engagements with other South Asian neighbours. Modi will visit Naypyidaw next month to meet Myanmar’s President Htin Kyaw and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will visit Dhaka to meet her Bangladesh counterpart Abul Hassan Mahmud Ali. She will also call on Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Sushma last week visited Kathmandu to attend the meeting of the foreign ministers of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). Apart from calling on Deuba and Nepalese President Bidhya Devi Bhandari, she also had bilateral meetings Bhutanese Foreign Minister Damcho Dorjee and Sri Lanka’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vasantha Senanayeke, on the sidelines of the BIMSTEC meet.
New Delhi’s engagement with the neighbouring country is aimed at sending out a message to Beijing at a time when India’s strained relations with China worsened further due to the face-off between soldiers of the two countries at Doklam plateau in western Bhutan.
China has been trying to spread its tentacles in South Asia, taking it beyond its “all-weather friend” and India’s arch-rival Pakistan. Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives are among the South Asian nations, which have been a theatre of competition between India and China for geopolitical influence.