New York: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived here today on his second visit to the US, has a packed schedule ahead of him, during which he will address world leaders at a landmark UN sustainable development summit and interact with top CEOs and the Indian diaspora.
During his stay in the financial capital of the country for next two days, Modi will attend a round table on the financial sector, an important meeting with Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) keen to invest in India. He will also headline a round table on media and communications hosted by News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch and attend a dinner with Fortune 500 company CEOs in the Silicon Valley. He would then fly to the West Coast for his visit to California from September 26-27.
“A packed schedule awaits in the Big Apple. PM @narendramodi arrives in New York on the first part of his US visit,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted soon after Modi’s plane touched down at the JFK International Airport here. The Prime Minister was received at the airport by Indian Ambassador Arun K Singh, India’s envoy to the UN Asoke Mukerji, Consul General Dnyaneshwar Mulay and their spouses. Modi later arrived at the Waldorf Astoria hotel here to a grand welcome by his supporters.
He will return to New York on September 28 for a bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama as well as to attend a high-level peacekeeping summit at the United Nations. On Friday, he will address global heads of state at the Sustainable Development Summit hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when the new and ambitious post-2015 development agenda will be adopted.
India will also host the G-4 summit here on September 26, before Modi leaves for the West Coast for a two-day trip during when he will have meetings with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google’s new CEO Sundar Pichai. He will also attend a grand community reception in San Jose. Modi will meet Barack Obama on September 28, his third summit meeting with the US President in about a year. During his stay in the city, Modi will have meetings with French President Francois Hollande and heads of state from Bhutan, Sweden, Guyana and Cyprus, as well as the heads of state of Brazil, Japan and Germany at the G-4 summit on September 26.
Modi is expected to focus on giving a further push to early and urgent reform of the Security Council and to send an “unambiguous message” of “zero tolerance against terrorism”. Officials said Prime Minister Modi will not have a bilateral meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif during his current five-day trip to the US. Indian-Americans turned out in large numbers outside the historic hotel in mid-town Manhattan to welcome Prime Minister Modi, as he drove down straight from the airport to hotel.
Holding banners and posters of ‘America Loves Modi’, a large number of Indian-Americans chanted ‘Modi-Modi’ amidst beating of drums as the Prime Minister’s entourage entered the hotel. In his usual characteristic style, Modi came out of his SUV to meet his supporters for a brief moment, before entering the hotel. However, tucked away in one corner was a small group of protestors from the Patel community. “We have not called off the protest. It will continue wherever Modi travels in the US,” said Tejas Patel, who claimed to be representing the US Patel community.
He claimed that the security agents allowed only 10 of them to come near the hotel. “We are demanding reservations for the Patel community in Gujarat,” he said. But many in the Indian-American community said there was no sign of protest. “It was politically motivated by certain interested sections. Protest has fizzled out,” said Jagdish Sewhani, an Indian-American leader.
