Sri Lanka PM Harini Amarasuriya to arrive in Delhi on October 16

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya will arrive in New Delhi on Thursday (October 16, 2025) for events and high-level meetings with Indian leaders and business community representatives, on the heels of her visit to Beijing, where she attended the ‘Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women 2025.

During her three-day visit to India, her first since assuming charge as Premier last year, Ms. Amarasuriya is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who is scheduled to call on her on Thursday (October 16, 2025), according to official sources in New Delhi.

The visiting Sri Lankan leader will also interact with representatives of business chambers and industry bodies, officials said, as India and Sri Lanka seek to enhance partnership in trade, investment, and development cooperation.

PM Modi was in Sri Lanka in April 2025 and said he was “grateful” for President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s “sensitivity towards Indian interests”.

President Dissanayake — the leftist leader who was elected to the country’s top office in a watershed election in 2024 — and his government have vowed to pursue a neutral foreign policy, including with India and China, both key partners for the island nation.

On October 14, 2025, PM Amarasuriya met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. “Our discussion focused on strengthening bilateral cooperation, advancing development partnerships under the Belt and Road Initiative, and deepening collaboration across multiple sectors,” she said in a social media post following the meeting.

A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry described China and Sri Lanka as “fellow travellers” and said “China always regards Sri Lanka as a priority in its neighbourhood diplomacy”.

Further, President Xi, in his meeting with PM Amarasuriya, said China stands ready to work with Sri Lanka on “high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, expand cooperation in port economy, modern agriculture, digital economy, green economy, tourism, and other areas to boost Sri Lanka’s economic and social development.” The two sides agreed to strengthen security cooperation, according to the statement.

Ms. Amarasuriya’s engagements in New Delhi also include a felicitation event at Hindu College, Delhi University, from where the academic-turned-politician obtained her first degree.

An anthropologist by training, she was a prominent voice in Sri Lankan academia, teaching at the Open University of Sri Lanka, before joining active politics. Her research in areas including mental health, gender, labour, and involvement as an activist in campaigns for higher state spending on public education drew attention. Prior to her entry into active politics in 2020, when the National People’s Power nominated her to Parliament, Ms. Amarasuriya served as a member of the Public Representations Committee on Constitutional Reforms in Sri Lanka, a Cabinet-appointed mechanism tasked with the first country-wide public consultations on constitutional reform.