Fiji invites people for Indian PM Narendra Modi's welcoming ceremony

Suva, Nov 17: Fijian people have been invited to be part of the traditional welcoming ceremony to be accorded to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is scheduled to visit Fiji, home to a large ethnic Indian population, this week.

The welcome ceremony will take place at Albert Park here Wednesday, Fiji Live reported.

During his visit, Modi will meet Fijian leaders as well as leaders and representatives of 12 other Pacific Island nations.

Modi is also expected to visit the parliamentary complex and make school visits. He will leave for India Nov 20.

He will be the second Indian prime minister to visit Fiji after the late Indira Gandhi, who toured in 1981.

Ethnic Indians comprise 37 percent of Fiji's population of nearly 900,000.

Most of them are descendants of indentured labourers who were brought in by British rulers from India between 1879 and 1916 to work in the country's sugarcane plantations.

IANS