Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on 3-day India Visit from Today

New Delhi [India], Nov 28 (ANI): Newly elected Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will arrive here on Thursday on a three-day visit to the country.This is Rajapaksa's maiden foreign trip after becoming the island nation's president earlier this month.Rajapaksa is scheduled to arrive in the national capital in the evening. The following day, the Sri Lankan President will meet External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in the morning, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).Rajapaksa will be accorded a ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhawan and will lay a wreath at Rajghat, the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi.Following this, the Sri Lankan President will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi for talks at Hyderabad House following which the two leaders will give their press statements. In the evening, Rajapaksa will meet President Ram Nath Kovind.On Saturday, he is slated to attend a programme in the city. Later in the evening, Rajapaksa will emplane for Sri Lanka.The MEA had said that the Indian government is ready to work very closely with the new government in Sri Lanka and expressed hope that it will fulfill the aspirations of the Tamil community living in the island nation."India is ready to closely work with the newly formed government in Sri Lanka and deepening our age-old relationship with the country. Our relationship with Sri Lanka or any other country is not dependent on a third country. It is entirely independent of any other factor," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a weekly briefing on November 21.Last week, Jaishankar had made a brief visit to Colombo where he met Rajapaksa and announced that the latter accepted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's invitation to visit India on November 29.70-year-old Rajapaksa had defeated United National Party (UNP) candidate Sajith Premadasa by more than 13 lakh votes in the recently-concluded presidential elections in Sri Lanka. He is the second member of the Rajapaksa family to become the president.His older brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is currently the island nation's prime minister, had served as president from 2005 to 2015. (ANI)

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