Indian PM to address joint sitting of T&T Parliament

The Prime Min­is­ter of In­dia is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress a joint sit­ting of this coun­try’s Par­lia­ment dur­ing his of­fi­cial vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go from Ju­ly 3–4, 2025, at the in­vi­ta­tion of T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

While no of­fi­cial sched­ule of events has yet been re­leased by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, In­dia’s Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, on June 27, pub­lished a gen­er­al agen­da for Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di’s of­fi­cial vis­its to Ghana, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ar­genti­na, Brazil, and Namib­ia be­tween Ju­ly 2 and 9.

Trinidad and To­ba­go will be the sec­ond leg of his diplo­mat­ic tour.

Ac­cord­ing to In­dia’s Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, “Prime Min­is­ter (Mo­di) will hold talks with the Pres­i­dent of Trinidad & To­ba­go, H.E. Chris­tine Car­la Kan­ga­loo, and Prime Min­is­ter H.E. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and dis­cuss fur­ther strength­en­ing of the In­dia–Trinidad & To­ba­go re­la­tion­ship. Prime Min­is­ter is al­so ex­pect­ed to ad­dress a Joint Ses­sion of the Par­lia­ment of T&T. The vis­it of Prime Min­is­ter to T&T will im­part fresh im­pe­tus to the deep-root­ed and his­tor­i­cal ties be­tween the two coun­tries.”

On Thurs­day, In­dia’s High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Dr Pradeep Singh Ra­jpuro­hit, and a del­e­ga­tion were seen leav­ing the Red House in Port of Spain.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee was asked about the pur­pose of their vis­it and whether it was in re­la­tion to Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di’s up­com­ing trip. How­ev­er, he de­ferred those ques­tions to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia reached out to For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers to as­cer­tain when a full itin­er­ary would be re­leased.

Min­is­ter Sobers said the itin­er­ary would be un­veiled clos­er to the date of Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di’s ar­rival due to se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons.

“The itin­er­ary is one that we can­not re­lease too ear­ly based up­on se­cu­ri­ty rec­om­men­da­tions from both our lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus and our shared se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ment with In­dia’s se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.”

He added, “Trinidad and To­ba­go in­tends to have the event be a very en­joy­able, cul­tur­al, and im­pact­ful one that will be shared by all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans through­out the length and breadth of the coun­try.”

While this is Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di’s first of­fi­cial trip to Trinidad and To­ba­go, he pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed in 2002 as part of a del­e­ga­tion at­tend­ing the World Hin­du Con­fer­ence.

The last In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter to vis­it Trinidad and To­ba­go was Dr Man­mo­han Singh, who led a high-lev­el del­e­ga­tion to the CHOGM (Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing) sum­mit in Port of Spain in No­vem­ber 2009.

In­dia was one of the first coun­tries to es­tab­lish diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Trinidad and To­ba­go fol­low­ing its in­de­pen­dence from the Unit­ed King­dom on 31 Au­gust 1962.

Ear­li­er this week, Health Min­is­ter Dr Rishad Seecher­an said Mo­di’s vis­it would mark a piv­otal mo­ment not just for diplo­ma­cy, but for tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments in the health sys­tem.

Seecher­an ex­plained that, with In­dia’s tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments—es­pe­cial­ly in af­ford­able health­care—Trinidad and To­ba­go stands to ben­e­fit sig­nif­i­cant­ly from shared ex­per­tise and joint ini­tia­tives.

He fur­ther not­ed that ef­forts would al­so be made to align with a vi­sion for deep­er part­ner­ships.

“We will be look­ing for part­ner­ships. In the past, we have used hos­pi­tals in In­dia with as­sis­tance from the Chil­dren’s Life Fund, and we will look to see if we can ex­pand in terms of that av­enue, as well as in oth­er ar­eas, pos­si­bly phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, health ser­vices, and we will see how it goes.”

Fol­low­ing his vis­it to this coun­try, Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di will trav­el to Ar­genti­na, Brazil, and fi­nal­ly Namib­ia.