The 3 day 15th Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas will begin from Monday. The event from 21 st to 23rd January 2019 will take place in Varanasi with Prime minister Narendra Modi inaugurating the event on Tuesday and President Ram Nath Kovind speaking at the closing ceremony on Wednesday. Prime Minister of Mauritius Pravind Jugnauth who is on a week long India visit, will be the chief guest in this year’s Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas (PBD).
Speaking ahead of the event External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said, "on the 22nd evening there will be a program on Ganga by Hema Malini."
On 24th the will be taken to Prayagraj for Kumbh Mela, on 25th they will be brought to Delhi for sightseeing and on 26th they will witness Republic day at Rajpath.
Provisions have been made by Uttar Pradesh govt for a good stay of diaspora members who will be visiting the city including a tent city or get a taste of Indian hospitality in the houses of people of Varanasi. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said, "Under Varanasi Aatithya and to give the diaspora members the feel of Indian hospitality, families in Varanasi have opened their doors. PM wanted this and to facilitate this, people have registered and we have selected families were NRIs can stay"
On the first day, Youth PBD will take place in which chief guests will be Himanshu Gulati, Member of Parliament in Norway and Kamaljeet Bakshi, Member of Parliament from New Zealand Kamaljeet Bakshi. 30 people will be honoured by the President with Pravasi Samman award on the last day.
The decision for the celebration of Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas was taken by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the 1st PBD took place under his Prime Ministership from 9th to 11th Jan 2003. To honour him, the auditorium in which PBD 2019 will take place has been named after him and an exhibition is also being organised to remember him.
Asked how will PBD increase the diplomatic outreach, minister of state in the ministry of external affairs General VK Singh in a curtain raiser press conference ahead of the event said, "The amount of money that our diaspora members send to India, which is not visible to everybody, the amount of remittances that we get back to India, that is not visible to everybody but their effect is not obviously visible to everybody. Whatever we spend on we do it after much deliberations and what I believe that the message that we put across through this and the way we have structured the Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas, it definitely improves our outreach."
2 Chief Ministers from Haryana and Uttarakhand will be participating in the PBD.
This is the 3rd PBD under the Modi govt. The first was held in Jan 2015 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, second in Jan of 2017 in Bengaluru, Karnataka and this year it is taking place in Varanasi, UP for the first time. PBD every year has been taking place on 9th January to mark to arrival of father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi back to India from South Africa in 1915 but this year it is taking place on 21st to align it with Kumbh Mela and Republic day so that diaspora can have a rich experience of India's culture at Prayagraj and grandeur at Rajpath. It was also under Modi govt, PBD was made a biennial event from an annual event earlier before 2015.