Nepal’s Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba will hold a review of Indo-Nepal bilateral relations and cooperation in areas such as trade, health, power and connectivity, with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in New Delhi next week, a source has said.
“This visit is in the tradition of periodic high level exchanges between the two countries. It would give both sides an opportunity to review the entire gamut of bilateral relations, including development and economic partnership, trade, cooperation in health sector, power, connectivity, people to people links and other issues of mutual interest,” the source told BusinessLine.
Deuba’s visit, scheduled on April 1-3, will be his first bilateral visit abroad after becoming PM in July 2021. He will meet Modi on April 2 and will also visit Varanasi, the source added. The Nepalese PM is also scheduled to meet other Indian leaders and senior officials.
Deuba had visited India in each of his four earlier stints as PM. The most recent visit in his capacity as PM was in 2017.
An earlier visitplanned in January this year, when Deuba was scheduled to participate in a business summit in Gujarat, had to be postponed due to rising cases of Covid-19 in the country. The meeting next week, however, will not be the first between Modi and Deuba, since the latter’s election in July last year. The two had met in Glasgow, Scotland in November last year on the sidelines of the UN climate conference.