India's Modi flies to UK to sign trade deal with Starmer

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi to Britain on Thursday, where the pair will sign a recently announced UK–India trade deal.

Modi will also meet King Charles III during his visit to Britain — his fourth since becoming India’s prime minister in 2014.

Starmer and Modi are also likely to discuss last month’s Air India disaster, in which 241 people died when a London-bound flight crashed after taking off from Ahmedabad in western India.

The British leader is facing calls to raise the case of a Scottish Sikh activist who was jailed in India seven years ago on terror charges.

In May, Starmer and Modi announced they had struck a free trade agreement that the British government says will eventually add £4.8 billion a year to the UK economy.

‘Our landmark trade deal with India is a major win for Britain,’ Starmer said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Starmer’s year-old government is struggling to fire up an economy weakened by years of stagnant growth and high inflation.

The UK and India hope the accord will boost trade between the two countries by £25.5 billion, as well as bolstering the British economy and wages.

Britain and India are the sixth and fifth largest economies respectively, with a trade relationship worth around £41 billion and investment supporting more than 600,000 jobs across both countries.

As he left India on Wednesday, Modi said the partnership had ‘achieved significant momentum in the last few years’. ‘We will have the opportunity to further enhance our economic partnership, aimed at fostering prosperity, growth and job creation in both countries,’ he added.

The accord will slash tariffs on imports of UK goods into India, including whisky, cosmetics and medical devices. In return, the UK will cut tariffs on clothes, footwear and food products — including frozen prawns — from India.

Air India crash

On June 12, some 169 Indian passengers and 52 British nationals were killed in the Air India crash, one of the deadliest plane disasters in terms of British fatalities.

A lawyer for 20 British families expects Starmer to raise claims that some victims’ remains were wrongly identified. James Healy-Pratt told the Press Association that relatives of one victim found the coffin contained ‘co-mingled’ remains. A different family was told a coffin held the body of someone else entirely, not their loved one, the agency reported.

Another tricky topic could be blogger Jagtar Singh Johal, imprisoned in India since 2017 on accusations of plotting terror attacks against right-wing Hindu leaders. He has not been convicted and in March was cleared of one of the nine charges against him. His brother, Gurpreet Singh Johal, said the case ‘should be high on the agenda’ when the two leaders meet.

Starmer and Modi have met twice recently — at the G7 summit in Canada last month and at the G20 meeting in Brazil last year.

By RSS/AFP