As Australia prepares to welcome Narendra Modi, the first Indian Prime Minister to visit the country in nearly three decades. Modi is scheduled to visit Australia for the two-day G-20 summit in Brisbane starting November 15. He will be the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Australia since Rajiv Gandhi, who visited the country to see Bob Hawke in 1986.
Expected to be participated in by over 15,000 people, the Sydney event is being hosted by the Indian Australian Community Foundation (IACF), a coalition of diverse Indian-Australian organisations, to welcome the Indian prime minister.
“The Sydney event is the only community address that Prime Minister Modi will be delivering during his Australian tour. It holds significance as it is occurring when an Indian prime minister is visiting Australia after 28 years,” Ramyavaran Ramaswamy, one of the main organisers from IACF, told IANS.
“Within three days of opening registration, over 250 community organisations have registered to be a ‘Reception Partner’ for the event. In many other senses, it will be bigger than the Madison Square event of the US,” he added.
Modi would be participating in a two-day G20 Summit starting Nov 15. It will be followed by the community reception in Sydney Nov 17 during which Modi will address the Indian Diaspora. He will address a joint parliamentary session in Canberra the next day.
According to sources, IACF will organise the event with the support of hundreds of groups representing the Indian diaspora’s broad spectrum of cultural, linguistic and charitable organisations, Balesh Singh Dhankhar.