Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Sri Lanka from 13 to 15 March, the first bilateral visit by an Indian PM to the island nation in over 25- years, Cabinet Spokesperson Minister Rajitha Senaratne said.
During the visit, Modi is likely to travel to Jaffna in the Tamil-majority Northern Province, earlier the Hindu newspaper said in an article.
The visit has been scheduled a month after the visit of President, Maithripala Sirisena, to New Delhi.
The previous bilateral visit to Sri Lanka by an Indian Prime Minister was in 1987, when Rajiv Gandhi travelled to Colombo to sign the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord with the then Sri Lankan President, J. R. Jayewardene. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in Colombo in 2008 to attend the SAARC summit and hand over its chairmanship to the then President, Mahinda Rajapaksa. However, he skipped the Commonwealth Summit that Sri Lanka hosted in November 2013, a decision that was strongly criticised by sections in New Delhi and Colombo.
