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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will visit India in January 2021 to be the chief guest at the Republic Day Parade, United Kingdom foreign secretary Dominic Raab announced after holding talks with his Indian counterpart external affairs minister S Jaishankar.
“Prime Minister Boris Johnson has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to join the UK-hosted G7 summit next year. The UK Prime Minister has also accepted the very generous invitation to attend India’s Republic Day celebrations (as chief guest) in January which is a great honour,” Raab said.
Johnson will be the first British PM to grace the Rajpath parade in 27 years. The last UK premier to be the chief guest at the January 26 parade was John Major in 1993.
Addressing a joint press conference after the talks, Jaishankar said the two sides held four hours of discussion on a wide range of issues and focus has been on how to take the bilateral ties to a higher level.
“In recent years as you know, there have been very big changes in global politics and we both believe that our interests are better served by working together more effectively,” he said and added that important issues, including the situation in Afghanistan as also developments in Gulf and evolution of the Indo-Pacific region were discussed.
Jaishankar said challenges posed by terrorism and radicalism which are shared concerns were also discussed during the talks.
