External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is carrying a letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for US President Donald Trump, news agency PTI quoted sources as saying.
Jaishankar is representing PM Modi as his special envoy at President Trump’s inaugural function on Monday, the report said.
US President-elect Donald Trump is swearing-in as the 47th president on Monday. Jaishankar’s presence at the presidential inauguration is in line with India’s general practice to send special envoys to attend the swearing-in ceremony of heads of state.
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Trump will deliver an address after the oath and attend three inaugural balls in the evening, with around 200,000 supporters expected in the city. Several prominent business leaders, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and TikTok CEO Shou Chew are likely to be present.
The swearing-in ceremony will take place indoors at 10:30 PM (Indian time) with Vice President-elect JD Vance taking his oath of office before Trump.
Meanwhile, the report said that several Indian officials have attended the swearing-in ceremony of the heads of state in the past. In May 2023, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh attended the swearing-in ceremony of the president of Nigeria. In November 2023, then Minister of Earth Sciences Kiren Rijiju attended the swearing-in ceremony of Maldivian president.
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Union Minister Nitin Gadkari attended the swearing-in ceremony of the Iranian president in July last year and MoS Pabitra Margherita attended the oath-taking ceremony of Indonesian president and president of Mexico in October 2024.
