NEW DELHI: VICE-President Hamid Ansari will represent India at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Venezuela as PM Narendra Modi has distanced himself from the Nehruvian legacy.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez was in India last week to extend the second invitation to Modi for the event to be held on September 17-18.
This will be only the second time an Indian PM has given the summit a miss since the country co-founded the movement. Only former caretaker PM Charan Singh failed to attend the summit, in 1979. However, there is no official announcement yet. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had said that “blocs and alignments are less relevant now”. As NAM is trying to keep itself relevant in the post-Cold War era, the change in policy is seen in juxtaposition to New Delhi’s growing proximity to Washington.