Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba is set to participate in the 10th edition of Raisina Dialogue scheduled to take place from March 17 to 19 in New Delhi.

The Raisina Dialogue is India’s premier conference on geopolitics and geo-economics. Every year, leaders in politics, business, media and civil society converge in New Delhi to discuss the state of the world and explore opportunities for cooperation on a wide range of contemporary matters.

Last year, then foreign minister NP Saud attended the dialogue. Besides participating at a session in the conference, Deuba is also likely to meet high-level officials of the Indian government and some foreign participants, said a Nepali diplomat based in New Delhi.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to inaugurate this year’s conference, which is backed by the Indian government.

Nepal government had initially planned to send Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Bishnu Paudel to the conference, an official at the Prime Minister’s Office said. But Paudel had to engage in budget preparations, so foreign minister Deuba will participate in the conference, the official said.

Organisers of the conference—the External Affairs Ministry of India and Observer Research Foundation—haven’t published the list of speakers and tentative programme list as of Tuesday evening.

This will be Deuba’s third visit to India since she became the foreign minister in July last year. In August, she visited New Delhi at the invitation of her counterpart, S Jaishankar, and held talks with Modi, Jaishankar and other senior Indian leaders and officials.

She visited New Delhi for the second time in December for a health check up; though she did not hold any official meeting during that visit, she participated in some events like Indo-Nepal Economic Conference, organised jointly by the EGROW Foundation and Kathmandu University-Nepal Centre for Contemporary Studies (KU-NCCS) and India Foundation.

Ahead of participating in the Raisina Dialogue, foreign minister Deuba is expected to visit New Delhi on March 10 for a health check up. “She has to visit New Delhi for the next round of her follow-up treatment, so she is likely to fly to the city on a personal trip, most likely on March 10,” a senior foreign ministry official said. “If her health check-up completes soon, she will return back to Kathmandu and will visit Delhi again for Raisina Dialogue. If not, she will stay there and return back home after participating in the dialogue.” She is also planning to go for pilgrimage in Jharkhand, India, the official said.

MoFA has turned into a ‘rescue ministry’

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Minister Deuba remarked that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had turned into a ‘rescue ministry’ as most of its resources have been dedicated to rescuing Nepali citizens abroad.

“Most of the ministry’s work is to rescue Nepali workers abroad,” Deuba said while addressing a training programme of her party Nepali Congress in Bhairahawa on Tuesday. “Nepalis living and working abroad are facing so many problems.”

Deuba added, “Due to our limited resources, manpower and means, the rescue efforts have become increasingly difficult. We have hardly 40 diplomatic presences across the globe but Nepali nationals have reached more than 100 countries.”