Japanese PM Suga calls off India visit

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has reportedly cancelled plans to visit India at the end of this month due to the Covid surge both in India and at home, reports from Japan said on Wednesday morning.

According to these reports, Mr Suga was supposed to visit India and the Phillipines in April-end. While India is being battered by the second wave of Covid, the number of cases is reportedly sharply rising in Japan too.

Since the visit had not been formally announced by India, there has not been any formal announcement of the cancellation so far by New Delhi. Nevertheless, this will be the second time in the past 16 months when a Japanese PM has had to cancel plans of a visit to India. It may be recalled that the previous Japanese PM Shinzo Abe had cancelled a scheduled visit to India in December 2019, on account of violent protests rocking Assam then due to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) controversy.

Last month in a phone conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr Suga had “expressed serious concerns regarding unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East and the South China Sea, China’s Coast Guard Law and the situation in Hong Kong”.