PM Narendra Modi's oath-taking ceremony : Attendees and Preparation

Words - Saurabh Pandey

The most awaited moment of the world's largest democracy has now arrived. Narendra Modi will be sworn in as the Prime Minister of the world's largest democratic country today. People showed their beliefs towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi as they came out and voted in huge numbers and they made sure that they voted not the candidate but they voted for PM Modi.

By having a huge mandate, one-sided BJP became the single largest party with NDA raking in up to 353 Lok Sabha seats in the assembly which made sure that the opposition does not move to more than two-digit numbers, while the UPA got less than 100 seats in the 17th Loksabha Election.

Although the election proved to be the mega event of the year, today, the biggest event will take place where Narendra Modi will be sworn in as the Prime Minister for the second time. Due to the soaring popularity of PM Narendra Modi all across the world, the guest list is also as much big as the mandate. Today, all eyes will be on India to see their most popular leader sworn in as PM.

The guests which will be present for the swearing-in ceremony are the BIMSTEC countries (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) and they have confirmed their presence. On the other hand, Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth and Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov have confirmed their participation at the event.

President of Bangladesh Abdul Hamid, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister of Nepal K P Sharma Oli have confirmed their participation at the ceremony. President of Myanmar, U Win Myint and Bhutanese Prime Minister Lotay Tshering have also confirmed their presence at the event. From Thailand, the Special Envoy Grisada Boonrach will represent the country at the ceremony.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, besides former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will also attend the event as per sources.

This will be the first time ever that Rashtrapati Bhavan will be having more than 8000 guests for the ceremony where earlier the total number of guests was around 4500 to 5000. Coming to the cooking section, the chefs at the Rashtrapati Bhavan are preparing a special dal which is known as Dal Raisina which takes around 48 hours to cook. President Ram Nath Kovind has invited many VVIP delegates which include the BIMSTEC leaders as well as 40 Indian VVIPs, including the Vice President of India Venkaiah Naidu. The oath-taking ceremony will start by 7:00 pm and will continue up to 8:30 pm.  After the ceremony gets over, the dinner for delegates and dignitaries will start by 9:00 pm in the evening.