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President Droupadi Murmu on Tuesday held a banquet for Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and agreed that there was great potential to deepen ties in several aspects between the two nations.
In a post on X, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said, "President Droupadi Murmu received President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa of Mongolia at Rashtrapati Bhavan and hosted a banquet in his honour. The two leaders agreed that there is great potential to further deepen ties between India and Mongolia, particularly in the field of development partnership and cultural and people-to-people ties." https://x.com/rashtrapatibhvn/status/1978134170695004311 Earlier in the day, MEA Secretary (East) P Kumaran said while speaking at the Special Briefing on cultural exchange, "We have signed a cultural exchange programme as part of the MoU signed today. And, I think we will be developing the programme further as per the areas identified in the programme. What I said in my opening remarks was that we will have an ICCR youth orientation trip which will allow Mongolian students to come here." He also talked about interest from the Mongolian side on direct flights. "There is interest on the Mongolian side to try and have direct flights between Mongolia and India. One issue that seems to be holding it back is the viability of the operations. Today, President Khurelsukh mentioned to Prime Minister Modi that there is a Mongolian carrier that is interested in operating chartered flights to India. So, it was just a preliminary kind of information that was provided. We will be looking at the destinations and further details about how to take it forward," he said. "We are hoping that the fact that we have gratis e-visas for Mongolian citizens, and the fact that Mongolians are also facilitating visas for us on a gratis basis, we should be having increasingly better viability for such operations. But it is still early days. We will see how it goes," he added. (ANI)
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