Washington, DC – With the First Family back at the White House after vacationing in Hawaii, officials are all set to give final touches to US President Barack Obama’s visit to India to attend the Republic Day Parade on January 26 as chief guest.
Obama last year accepted an invitation from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the Republic Day Parade on January 26 and will be the first US President to do so. Obama is also the first American President to visit India twice.
“This visit will mark the first time a US president will have the honor of attending Republic Day, which commemorates the adoption of India’s constitution,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest, immediately after the news was broken by Modi in a tweet.
Modi had tweeted: “This Republic Day, we hope to have a friend over…invited President Obama to be the 1st US President to grace the occasion as Chief Guest.”
Earnest said that Obama will also meet with Modi and other officials “to strengthen and expand the US-India strategic partnership.”
This will be the second Obama-Modi Summit coming just four months after a much-hyped meet in Washington where the two sides had put out a fairly detailed action plan covering key areas especially defense cooperation, energy, smart cities initiative and counterterrorism actions.
Before his earlier visit to India in November 2010, President Obama had said, “The relationship between the United States and India will be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century.”
Asked to comment on the visit, Vin Gupta, founder of infofree.com and serial entrepreneur, said “(President) Obama has already expressed support for India by coming on Republic Day. It shows his love for India.”
Gupta feels that now the Indian side should take it to greater heights as an American president visits for the first time to be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day
“Now it’s up to Modi government to increase trade and defense cooperation with USA. Ball is in Modi’s court,” said Gupta who praised Modi’s visit to the US last September.
Expressing his support of Modi’s pro-economy measures, Gupta said, “His coming to the US was well- received by the Indian community here, the US Government and the American media too.”
Calling Modi a great leader and orator, Gupta said, “We are willing to support him. And now he needs a few more people of his caliber.”
Gupta, a confirmed philanthropist, was born in a small village of Rampur Maniharan in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and attended the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, before moving to the US in 1967 to get his master’s degree and revolutionizing the data mining and analytics industry.