Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba met Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla in Delhi on Saturday after he arrived in New Delhi for a three-day visit to the country. This was his fifth visit to India as Prime Minister, with the last visit being in August 2018. The previous three visits took place in 2004, 2002 and 1996.

Deuba, who is accompanied by his wife, Dr Arzu Deuba, and a large delegation is visiting India at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with whom he will have a formal meeting at Hyderabad House Sunday. The two countries are seeking to repair ties that were frayed in the last years by disagreements over the border and Kathmandu's political tilt towards Beijing, particularly by the previous communist-led government of Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli. 

Earlier Deuba met ruling Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) President JP Nadda at the party headquarters. "Had a courtesy meeting with Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba today. India and Nepal are not just neighbours but are very close to each other even from religious, cultural, linguistic and historic viewpoints," Nadda said in a tweet.

Besides official engagements in New Delhi, Deuba and his wife will visit Varanasi. 

The last Head of State/Head of Government-level visit from Nepal was in May 2019, when then Prime Minister K P Oli visited India for the swearing-in ceremony of PM Modi and the Union Council of Ministers. Before that Modi had visited Nepal in August 2018 for the 4th BIMSTEC Summit in Kathmandu, which was preceded by a state visit to Nepal in May 2018.

Deuba is a veteran politician of the Nepali Congress with a political career spanning over seven decades. This is Deuba's fifth tenure as PM. His first term was from September 1995 to March 1997, ANI news agency said. 

(SAM)