New Delhi has formally informed Georgetown that Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi will no longer be visiting Guyana as planned in early December due to commitments in his home country, Minister of State Joseph Harmon announced yesterday.
“The information I have from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is that there was communication with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating that Mr. Modi will no longer visiting at that time and [India] gave the explanation that domestic circumstances precluded him from making the visit to Guyana at this point in time,” Harmon told a post-Cabinet press briefing yesterday.
In March, the Ministry of the Presidency announced that Modi would be visiting later this year. Last month, it was Harmon who announced that Modi was expected to be in Guyana in early December and that as a result “serious” work was being done to ensure that the reconstruction of the collapsed Indian immigration monument base at Palmyra, Corentyne was completed before his arrival.
The Indian Prime Minister’s visit would have been the first trip here by an Indian Prime Minister since the visit by the late Indira Gandhi in 1968 and it was highly anticipated.