Joe Biden will embark on his maiden visit to India as US Vice-President on Monday to discuss key bilateral issues, including trade, energy and defence, to make Indo-US ties the most important strategic partnership of the 21st century.

During his four-day-long stay in India, Biden will hold meetings with the top Indian leadership, including President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Biden, accompanied by his wife Jill would arrive in New Delhi on July 22, would focus on the four key issues of economic and trade ties, energy and climate change; defence co-operation and regional co-operation.

Biden, 70, had visited New Delhi in 2008 as a Senator.

He will also hold talks with Vice-President Hamid Ansari and Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj.

Biden, who wanted to travel to India in the first term itself, would begin his trip with a visit to the Gandhi Smriti Museum.

All his meetings have been scheduled for July 23, at the end of which he would attend a dinner hosted in his honour by Ansari.

Biden would spend the next two days — July 24 and 25 — in Mumbai, where he would meet business leaders at a round table and deliver a policy speech at the Bombay Stock Exchange.

He is expected to set up an “ambitious vision” for the India-US relationship, in addition to a women’s empowerment event at IIT Mumbai.

He would leave for Singapore on July 25.

All this while Jill would hold a series of health and nutritional events in New Delhi and Mumbai and visit the Taj Mahal in Agra.

Biden, however, would not be visiting the Taj Mahal.

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