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Friday, July 11, 2025

Indian PM to address joint sitting of T&T Parliament

by

Akash Samaroo
12 days ago
20250628
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi listens during the closing session of the Franco-Indian Economic Forum at the Quai d'Orsay on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. (Abdul Saboor, Pool Photo via AP)

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi listens during the closing session of the Franco-Indian Economic Forum at the Quai d'Orsay on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. (Abdul Saboor, Pool Photo via AP)

Abdul Saboor

The Prime Min­is­ter of In­dia is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress a joint sit­ting of this coun­try’s Par­lia­ment dur­ing his of­fi­cial vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go from Ju­ly 3–4, 2025, at the in­vi­ta­tion of T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

While no of­fi­cial sched­ule of events has yet been re­leased by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, In­dia’s Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, on June 27, pub­lished a gen­er­al agen­da for Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di’s of­fi­cial vis­its to Ghana, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ar­genti­na, Brazil, and Namib­ia be­tween Ju­ly 2 and 9.

Trinidad and To­ba­go will be the sec­ond leg of his diplo­mat­ic tour.

Ac­cord­ing to In­dia’s Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, “Prime Min­is­ter (Mo­di) will hold talks with the Pres­i­dent of Trinidad & To­ba­go, H.E. Chris­tine Car­la Kan­ga­loo, and Prime Min­is­ter H.E. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and dis­cuss fur­ther strength­en­ing of the In­dia–Trinidad & To­ba­go re­la­tion­ship. Prime Min­is­ter is al­so ex­pect­ed to ad­dress a Joint Ses­sion of the Par­lia­ment of T&T. The vis­it of Prime Min­is­ter to T&T will im­part fresh im­pe­tus to the deep-root­ed and his­tor­i­cal ties be­tween the two coun­tries.”

On Thurs­day, In­dia’s High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Dr Pradeep Singh Ra­jpuro­hit, and a del­e­ga­tion were seen leav­ing the Red House in Port of Spain.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee was asked about the pur­pose of their vis­it and whether it was in re­la­tion to Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di’s up­com­ing trip. How­ev­er, he de­ferred those ques­tions to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia reached out to For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers to as­cer­tain when a full itin­er­ary would be re­leased.

Min­is­ter Sobers said the itin­er­ary would be un­veiled clos­er to the date of Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di’s ar­rival due to se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons.

“The itin­er­ary is one that we can­not re­lease too ear­ly based up­on se­cu­ri­ty rec­om­men­da­tions from both our lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus and our shared se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ment with In­dia’s se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.”

He added, “Trinidad and To­ba­go in­tends to have the event be a very en­joy­able, cul­tur­al, and im­pact­ful one that will be shared by all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans through­out the length and breadth of the coun­try.”

While this is Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di’s first of­fi­cial trip to Trinidad and To­ba­go, he pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed in 2002 as part of a del­e­ga­tion at­tend­ing the World Hin­du Con­fer­ence.

The last In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter to vis­it Trinidad and To­ba­go was Dr Man­mo­han Singh, who led a high-lev­el del­e­ga­tion to the CHOGM (Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing) sum­mit in Port of Spain in No­vem­ber 2009.

In­dia was one of the first coun­tries to es­tab­lish diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Trinidad and To­ba­go fol­low­ing its in­de­pen­dence from the Unit­ed King­dom on 31 Au­gust 1962.

Ear­li­er this week, Health Min­is­ter Dr Rishad Seecher­an said Mo­di’s vis­it would mark a piv­otal mo­ment not just for diplo­ma­cy, but for tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments in the health sys­tem.

Seecher­an ex­plained that, with In­dia’s tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments—es­pe­cial­ly in af­ford­able health­care—Trinidad and To­ba­go stands to ben­e­fit sig­nif­i­cant­ly from shared ex­per­tise and joint ini­tia­tives.

He fur­ther not­ed that ef­forts would al­so be made to align with a vi­sion for deep­er part­ner­ships.

“We will be look­ing for part­ner­ships. In the past, we have used hos­pi­tals in In­dia with as­sis­tance from the Chil­dren’s Life Fund, and we will look to see if we can ex­pand in terms of that av­enue, as well as in oth­er ar­eas, pos­si­bly phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, health ser­vices, and we will see how it goes.”

Fol­low­ing his vis­it to this coun­try, Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di will trav­el to Ar­genti­na, Brazil, and fi­nal­ly Namib­ia.

Prime MinisterIndiaInstagramPMNarendra Modi


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