PM invites India's neighbourhood leaders for swearing-in ceremony; yet to dial Pakistan; Biden calls up to congratulate Modi

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, June 6

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will once again invite leaders from the neighbourhood when he plans to take oath of office for the third time on Saturday with most of the leaders confirming their attendance when he personally called them up on Wednesday.

PM Modi has not called up Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif so far.

Sources said Sharif would not be able to make it for the inaugural, tentatively scheduled for June 8, as he is in China for a five-day visit till June 10.

The invite to the neigbourhood is a redux of Modi’s first oath taking ceremony in 2014 which was attended by all SAARC leaders including then Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif.

Modi’s third oath taking ceremony as Prime Minister will be attended by Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Nepalese PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, Bhutanese PM Tshering Tobgay and Mauritius PM Pravind Jugnauth, who was the first world leader to call up PM Modi on Wednesday.

On the other hand, US President Joe Biden became the first leader from a major nation to call up Prime Minister Narendra Modi to congratulate him and his party on their third consecutive victory in the General Election. Keen to put momentum into ties from the starting block of the new NDA government, Biden will dispatch his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan who had earlier put off a scheduled visit in April amidst Iran-Israel and the Pannun episode tensions.

Terming the results as a “historic victory” for the Modi-led NDA, the White House readout on the phone call underlined Sullivan’s upcoming travel to New Delhi to engage the new government on shared US-India priorities, including the trusted, strategic technology partnership.

The call came five days before the two leaders will meet at the G-7 summit in Italy. There is suspense over whether Modi will join Biden in then travelling to Switzerland to attend a “Peace Summit” on Ukraine to which Russia has been pointedly excluded.