Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said he had declined an invitation from US President Donald Trump to visit America as he was keen to come to Odisha, “the land of Lord Jagannath”, instead.
“I was in Canada to take part in the G7 summit. There I got a call from US President Donald Trump, who invited me to his country,” Modi, here to take part in the first anniversary celebrations of Odisha’s maiden BJP government, said.
“He (Trump) said, ‘Since you are in Canada, why don’t you come over to the US? We can have a chat’. But I told him that I have to go to Odisha, the land of Lord Jagannath. I politely declined his invitation because I wanted to be with you in the land of Lord Jagannath,” he added.
Modi had on Tuesday declined an invite from Trump to visit the US on his way back from Canada, foreign secretary Vikram Misri had said in a statement on the phone conversation between the two leaders.
According to Misri’s statement, Modi had told Trump he could not accept the invitation because of his pre-existing schedule, and invited Trump to India for the Quad Summit, likely later this year.
The two leaders were scheduled to meet in Canada on the sidelines of the G7 Summit. However, Trump left the summit midway amid the rising hostilities between Israel and Iran.
Addressing his audience here on Friday, Modi accused the Congress, without naming it, of doing nothing for the development of the country and states like Odisha.
“But all that has changed with our party coming to power in Odisha, where development is now driven by a double engine government. People are getting double the benefit,” he said.
He, however, did not speak a word against Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, the state’s main Opposition party and a former BJP ally that ruled Odisha at a stretch from March 2000 to June 2024.
