Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli will hold a bilateral meeting with his counterpart Narendra Modi in Bodh Gaya during his upcoming visit to India. Since the Indian Prime Minister has a tradition of meeting foreign guests at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, this time the place where Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment was chosen.

Prime Minister Oli is preparing to go to India on August 31 for a two-day visit. After 14 months of becoming the Prime Minister, he is about to make an official visit to India. An official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that a meeting between the executive heads of the two countries was scheduled to take place in Bodh Gaya. Bodh Gaya in Bihar is famous as a holy pilgrimage site for followers of Buddhism.

It is not clear whether Oli will go to Bodh Gaya via Delhi or reach there directly from Kathmandu. An official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the schedule of Oli's visit and the route to Bodh Gaya will be decided by the visit of Indian Foreign Secretary Misri. Foreign Secretary Misri is coming to Kathmandu on Sunday to prepare for the visit. He will hand over the official invitation letter for the visit to Oli on behalf of Indian Prime Minister Modi. 

Misri is scheduled to land in Kathmandu on Sunday afternoon from an Indian military plane and meet with high-ranking officials including Prime Minister Oli, Foreign Minister Arju Rana Deuba, Foreign Secretary Amrit Rai. He will return on Monday after the meeting. This will be the second visit of Indian Foreign Secretary Misri to Nepal in a year. He was also in Kathmandu on July 27-28 last year. In the past, there was a formal meeting and a joint address between the Prime Minister of Nepal and his Indian counterpart who went on an official visit at Hyderabad House in Delhi. It was a practice to take the visiting Prime Minister outside Delhi only after the formal talks. 

Earlier, the then Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who was on an official visit to India, was taken to the Mahakal temple in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh after the official program in Delhi. Before that, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was taken to visit the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Banaras after Delhi.

Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Ahmedabad in 2014 when he visited India. Similarly, in 2019, Xi Jinping and Modi had a bilateral meeting in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In 2020, when US President Donald Trump visited India, he visited Gujarat. Modi welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited India two years ago, in Jaipur.

A foreign official said that sending the Foreign Secretary to invite Prime Minister Oli for a visit and choosing a location outside Delhi for bilateral talks should be understood as India giving special importance. According to him, the two leaders will have good time for formal as well as informal talks with each other during the meeting outside Delhi. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not released official information about Prime Minister Oli's visit to India.

India was sending a proposal of a religious place outside Delhi for the Oli-Modi meeting through diplomatic channels. There was doubt in Baluwatar whether Prime Minister Oli would be taken to Ayodhya. Oli gave the expression that Ram was born in Ayodhyapuri near Thori in Nepal a few years ago. An official of Baluwatar said, "Bodh Gaya has been decided after informal consultation between the two parties on the names of some cities."