Modi, Trump set to meet twice in less than a week this month: Indian envoy

The Indian ambassador to US asserted that the strategic relationship between two countries has the potential to become the ‘defining partnership’ within this century

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet twice in less than a week this month, India’s top envoy to America has said, asserting that the India-US strategic relationship has the potential to become the “defining partnership” within this century.

Since his re-election in May this year, Prime Minister Modi has met President Trump twice. The previous two meetings of the two leaders were on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Japan and G-7 Summit in France this summer. And later this week when Modi arrives in the US, they “are scheduled to meet twice more”, India’s ambassador to the US Harsh Vardhan Shringla told a Washington audience on Wednesday.

So, they would have “four meetings in the span of a few months,” Shringla said during the ‘India on the Hill: Charting a Future for Indo-US Relations’ event jointly organised by two think tanks The Heritage Foundation from the US and Observer Research Foundation (ORF) from India. Modi is scheduled to arrive in Houston on Saturday. A day later, Trump would join him in addressing the mega “Howdy Modi” rally to be attended by more than 50,000 Indian-Americans...