Suu Kyi Diwali guest

Suu Kyi Diwali guest

Nobel laureate and pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi would be visiting India next week for the first time after being elected to the Myanmar parliament following her party, the National League of Democracy’s clean sweep of the historic by-elections held in April. The ministry of external affairs said Suu Kyi would arrive on November 13 on invitation of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. She will be delivering the Nehru Memorial Lecture on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Pt Jawaharlal Nehru on November 14. “The close and friendly relations between India and Myanmar have been strengthened in the recent past through exchanges of high-level visits, including the state visits of the president of Myanmar to India in October 2011 and the prime minister of India to Myanmar in May 2012. The visit of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would be part of our ongoing engagement with the democratic and multi-party polity in Myanmar. It would provide opportunity to exchange views on all matters of mutual interest with a view to building upon the positive momentum in India-Myanmar relations,” the ministry of external affairs said on Friday. Aung San Suu Kyi would be in India till November 18. She will be calling on the vice-president, prime minister, speaker of the Lok Sabha and external affairs minister. She will also visit her alma mater Lady Sri Ram College Also, she will travel to Bangalore where she will visit the Indian Institute of Science and the Infosys Campus and tour rural areas in Andhra Pradesh to gain a firsthand impression of the rural development and women’s empowerment programmes being undertaken in India.