New Delhi. Top leaders from India’s neighbourhood and the Indian Ocean region, including Maldives President Mohammed Muizzo, Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe, attended the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Council of Ministers on Sunday.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, his Bhutanese counterpart Tshering Tobgay and Seychelles Vice President Ahmed Afeef also attended the ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Modi took oath for his third consecutive term a few days after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 293 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha elections.
Those who took oath as Union Cabinet ministers at the ceremony included senior BJP leaders Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman, S Jaishankar and Piyush Goyal. While Hasina and Afif arrived in Delhi on Saturday, Muizzu, Prachanda, Wickremesinghe, Jugnauth and Tobgay arrived on Sunday. The Ministry of External Affairs said the leaders of the seven countries were invited in line with the highest priority accorded to India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy and ‘SAGAR’ vision.
It said India is cooperating with countries in the Indian Ocean region under the broad policy framework of ‘SAGAR’ (Security and Growth for All in the Region). Leaders of the regional grouping SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries attended Modi’s first swearing-in ceremony when he took over as Prime Minister in 2014 after the BJP’s landslide election victory.
When Modi became the Prime Minister for the second consecutive time in 2019, the leaders of BIMSTEC countries attended his swearing-in ceremony.
Apart from India, BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) includes Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan.