G20 Summit preparations: MEA team visits Gurugram

A team from the Ministry of External Affairs on Friday held a meeting here with local officers and also visited some places in Gurugram and Nuh districts where foreign guests can be taken for excursion or sightseeing during the G20 Leaders' Summit to be held in the country next year, an official said.

India will assume the Presidency of the G20 for one year from December 1, 2022, to November 30, 2023, and is expected to host over 200 meetings across the country, beginning in December this year, while the G20 Leaders' Summit will be held in New Delhi on September 9 and 10 in 2023.

So far 55 cities have been selected for organizing these meetings across the country and Gurugram is also one of the city, where four to five meetings related to the G20 summit will be held, the official said.

In the meet, the appropriate places for organizing G20 meetings and short excursions of foreign guests were discussed with the concerned local officers, the official said.

These meetings will be on different topics like health, finance, environment, social issues, culture, tourism etc., he said.

During these meetings, there will be an opportunity to showcase the rich heritage, folk culture and other features of Haryana in front of the delegates of the Summit, G-20 team member Praveen Jakhar said Not only this, participating foreign guests can also visit unique and iconic places in and around Gurugram, if time permits after the meetings, he said.

“Since Gurugram is a unique model of urban development, it can also be showcased. Apart from the G-20 member countries, 9 other nations have also been invited as special invitees in the Summit. Website for the G-20 summit is likely to be launched in the month of October, wherein the full calendar of the summit would be displayed," Jakhar added.

The team along with the local officers also visited some places in Gurugram and Nuh districts on Friday, where foreign guests can be taken for excursion or sightseeing, the official said.

The G20 Summit team from the Ministry of External Affairs included Praveen Jakhar, Officer on Special Duty, Mahender Sehgal, Program Director from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and Lakshmi Prabha, a G-20 Logistics Consultant.

In the high level meeting held in the Conference Hall of PWD Rest House, Additional Resident Commissioner Dharmendra Singh, Haryana Bhawan in Delhi, Gurugram Chief Protocol Officer Vatsal Vashisht, City Magistrate Anu Shyokand, CEO of Faridabad Zila Parishad Suman Bhankar, Zila Parishad Nuh CEO Pradeep Ahlawat and many others were present.

The G20 or Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum of the world's major developed and developing economies.

It comprises Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, the US, and the European Union (EU).