India and Britain are moving to finalise plans for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the UK in November, with a Madison Square Garden-style event at Wembley Stadium expected be the showpiece of the trip.
Sources said that Indian foreign secretary S Jaishankar is scheduled to travel to London this month to finalise details of the visit, after which a formal invitation will be extended by the David Cameron government.
Modi’s address to about 20,000 NRIs at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden was the highlight of his visit to the US last September. The Wembley Stadium has a capacity of 90,000.
The British government was keen to host Modi for the inauguration of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in London in March. But with British elections scheduled for May, the Indian side chose to wait for a new government to be installed before Modi's visit. Finance minister Arun Jaitley had then made the trip to London to inaugurate the statue at Parliament Square in London.
According to sources, the British government was disappointed that Modi could not visit London in the first year of his rule when he has visited all major world capitals, including Washington DC, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Canberra, Toronto and Bonn. The Cameron government is keen to make up for this delay by pulling out all stops to make Modi’s visit a memorable success, sources added.
The British were hoping to host Modi as early as July, but sources said the visit would happen only after the Bihar assembly elections.
Although the agenda for Modi's visit will be finalised during the foreign secretary’s visit to London, the British are likely to offer partner city status to five cities as part of Modi’s 100 Smart Cities project, expertise for the Clean Ganga mission and help in creating a financial city.
November is the month when Britain celebrates the end of the First World War in which nearly 1.5 million Indians fought as part of the British Indian Army.
The last prime ministerial visit to that country was by Manmohan Singh in 2006. Since then, UK-India relations have plateaued, but now they are expected to be reinvigorated by Modi’s forthcoming visit. No major agreement has been signed between the two countries in recent years.
During Modi's visit, the two prime ministers are likely to announce the ‘twinning’ of some British and Indian cities, particularly in the context of the Indian government’s plans for ‘smart cities’. Currently, Rajkot is ‘twinned’ with Leicester, which has a large population of Gujarati-origin people.
Contributing to the Modi government’s ‘skills’ agenda and participating in efforts to clean the Ganga are expected to figure on the agenda.
Modi is likely to reiterate India’s demand to clamp down on anti-India forces functioning and raising funds in Britain, and the extradition of individuals such as Tiger Hanif, Ravi Shankaran and Raymond Varley.
Since 2006, British prime ministers have visited India four times (Gordon Brown in 2008 and David Cameron three times), reflecting something of a ‘one-way traffic’. The 2004 Joint Declaration between the two countries envisaged annual summits.
Cameron, who met Modi in Australia during the G20 meeting in October last, has often declared his eagerness to welcome Modi in London. His government (2010-15) had reversed the previous Labour government’s decision to boycott Gujarat after the 2002 riots in the state.
