UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson cancels his visit to India amid rising COVID-19 cases

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday cancelled a planned trip to India, scheduled to take place next week, due to the current coronavirus situation in India, Mr. Johnson’s office said.

Earlier, Downing Street had said that due to the coronavirus pandemic crisis in India, PM Johnson has decided to shorten the length of his planned visit – with the bulk of the programme now set to take place during the course of Monday, 26 April. But now the trip was cancelled completely.

A joint statement released by Mr. Johnson’s office quotes,“In the light of the current coronavirus situation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be able to travel to India next week. Instead Prime Ministers Modi and Johnson will speak later this month to agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership between the UK and India.”

While Indian MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, “The decision was taken as per mutual agreement by both sides.”

“Both leaders attach the highest importance to taking the India-UK partnership to its fullest potential and propose to remain in close touch in this regard and look forward to an in-person meeting later in the year,” Bagchi added.

UK PM Johnson said it was “only sensible” to scrap the trip “given what’s happened in India, the shape of the pandemic there”.

UK Prime Minister further added, “Countries around the world including our own have been through this. I think everybody’s got a massive amount of sympathy with India, what they’re going through. And I just want to stress that this is, we’re going to be going back, the relationship between the UK and India is of huge importance, and I’ll be talking to Narendra Modi on Monday, we’ll be trying to do as much as we can, virtually. Of course it will be frustrating, but we’ll try and replicate as much as we can remotely, and then look forward to doing it in person as and when circumstances allow, and hopefully before the Cop summit in November and hopefully we’ll get Narendra Modi over for the G7 in June.”

Asked why India had not yet been added to the UK’s travel red list given its COVID situation, Mr Johnson said: “The red list is very much a matter for the independent UK Health Security Agency – they will have to take that decision.”

Earlier this year, Johnson was invited as the chief guest in the Republic Day of India but it was cancelled due to surge in coronavirus cases in the UK.