Coronavirus | Amid surge, Narendra Modi cancels travel to Europe

With an uncontrollable surge of coronavirus instances in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cancelled his travel to Europe subsequent month, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) introduced. The determination was taken after discussions with the European Union management and the Portuguese authorities, that was going to host the summit in Porto, and had invited leaders of all 27 nations that comprise the EU to attend the assembly with Mr. Modi.

“In view of the COVID-19 situation, it has been decided, in consultation with the EU and Portuguese leadership, to hold the India-EU Leaders’ Meeting in a virtual format on 8 May 2021. The India-EU Leaders’ Meeting in the EU+27 format, the first time that such a meeting is being held, reflects the shared ambition of both sides to further deepen the Strategic Partnership,” MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi mentioned.

The cancellation comes a day after UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson cancelled his go to to India in view of the pandemic. Both the U.K. and the U.S. have additionally introduced travel restrictions and advisories to residents in opposition to travelling to India at the moment. Mr. Modi was anticipated to travel to France throughout the identical go to, which too, is now postpone.

In the run up to the proposed assembly, Mr. Modi had held plenty of bilateral conferences with European leaders, together with these of the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Luxembourg, Italy and others, by which future EU-India cooperation was mentioned.

India and the EU are additionally anticipated to focus on progress on the long-pending Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA), that has made little headway in additional than seven years, and had been doubtless to forge an settlement on cooperation on Indo-Pacific technique through the now-virtual assembly.

“To fulfil our potential, we need to be more ambitious in our cooperation on preventing climate crises, promoting human rights, building connectivity, sustainable trade and defending a multilateral international order,” an EU official quoted in a report on the highway forward for India-EU ties mentioned.

On April 12, EU and Indian officers additionally held the ninth “Human Rights dialogue” the place they mentioned “strengthening the Human Rights mechanisms for the promotion of human rights and the role of national human rights institutions, civil society actors and journalists”, the MEA had mentioned. A day later, the international affairs committee of the European Parliament, which had launched a number of discussions important of India on the difficulty of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and restrictions on NGOs up to now yr, cleared the report on India-EU ties, which contained stringent language expressing “concern at the deteriorating human rights situation in India”.

“The report also voices alarm regarding India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is fundamentally discriminatory in nature against Muslims and dangerously divisive,” an EU press launch said. It added that the report, that features particular references to the shutdown of Amnesty International and India’s Foreign Contribution Regulatory Act (FCRA), in addition to “caste-based” discrimination, could be put up for adoption within the EU Parliament.