Modi likely to visit US this month, to meet Joe Biden

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to travel to Washington DC and New York in the last week of September, according to top government sources. This will be his first visit to the United States since President Joe Biden assumed office early this year.

If the schedule works out as per ongoing discussions, the window of opportunity that is being explored is September 22-27, said the sources.

This will be Modi's first in-person meeting with Biden. The two have met virtually on at least three occasions — the Quad summit in March, the climate change summit in April, and the G-7 summit in June this year. Modi was supposed to travel to the UK for the G-7 summit where he could have met Biden but had to cancel the trip due to the second Covid-19 wave across India.

With the situation in Afghanistan unfolding rapidly, Modi's visit is significant. Besides meeting Biden, he is expected to have important meetings with the top echelons of the US administration.

Modi last visited the US in September 2019, when then US President Donald Trump had addressed the Howdy Modi event — the Prime Minister's "abki baar Trump sarkar" line had not gone down well with the Democratic party's establishment.

Two years since, it will be an effort to reach out to the Democratic establishment, which has been quite vocal about the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir.