Australia gets ready for Modi visit: To run special train, release Gujarati film

PM to visit four cities in four days

Narendra Modi will land in Australia on November 15.

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to travel to Australia on November 15 for the G-20 summit and a bilateral visit, ‘Modi mania’ has gripped Down Under.

Among the things being planned is a special train, the ‘Modi Express’, which will run from Melbourne to Sydney, a grand reception by the Indian community in Sydney’s Allphones Arena, a state banquet at Melbourne Cricket Ground and a joint parliamentary session in Canberra. A Gujarati film is also being released to coincide with the visit.

In a first for an Indian PM, Modi will visit four cities in four days. The last Indian PM to visit Australia was Rajiv Gandhi in 1986.

For the visit, Modi is said to have incorporated suggestions from the Indian community, which sent him messages and suggestions through the website, http://www.mygov.in.

Modi, who will reach Brisbane for the G-20 summit directly from Myanmar’s capital Nay Pyi Taw, is expected to meet a host of world leaders on the sidelines in Australia, including British PM David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

After attending the G-20 summit on November 15 and 16, Modi will go to Sydney on November 17, where he will address the Indian community at the state-of-the-art indoor stadium, the Allphones Arena, which has hosted concerts of musicians Pitbull, Ricky Martin, Rihanna and Mariah Carey in the past. Pop star Katy Perry will perform at the venue a few days after Modi’s visit.

The Indian community is planning to organise an exhibition on people’s migration from India to Australia about 5,000 years ago. A special train called the ‘Modi Express’ will take hundreds of Indians 870-km from Melbourne to Sydney for the event. The train will leave Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station at 8.30 pm on November 16. “This is a tribute to Modi ji’s travels on trains as a BJP and RSS functionary,” a BJP functionary said.

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Modi will travel to Canberra on November 17 night. On November 18, he will have a bilateral meeting with Australian PM Tony Abbott, during which they are expected to take forward the discussions they had in September when Abbott visited India.

Modi will address a joint session of the Australian parliament the same day.

Later, on November 18 evening, Abbott will host Modi for a state banquet at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Abbott is likely to give Modi a tour of the MCG, considered the Mecca of Australian cricket. The Australian government is planning to invite about 1,000 eminent people and Modi is expected to address them at the stadium.

The Indian community also plans to release a recent Gujarati film, Bey Yaar (Two friends), in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney during Modi’s visit.

Shubhajit Roy

Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor at The Indian Express, has been a journalist for more than 25 years now. Roy joined The Indian Express in October 2003 and has been reporting on foreign affairs for more than 17 years now. Based in Delhi, he has also led the National government and political bureau at The Indian Express in Delhi — a team of reporters who cover the national government and politics for the newspaper. He has got the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award for Excellence in Journalism ‘2016. He got this award for his coverage of the Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka and its aftermath. He also got the IIMCAA Award for the Journalist of the Year, 2022, (Jury’s special mention) for his coverage of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — he was one of the few Indian journalists in Kabul and the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the Taliban’s capture of power in mid-August, 2021. ... Read More