Earlier, Pakistan did not send a congratulatory message to Narendra Modi after his win in the elections. Last Friday, the Foreign Office spokesperson said that it would be “premature” to talk about the possibility of sending such a message at this time, as it is still being formed.
However, in Pakistan’s first official political structure response to the inception of the new government in India, PM Shehbaz Sharif congratulated his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Monday for taking oath as the PM of India. In a short message on X, Sharif also offered his congratulations on the same day immediately after Modi and his council of ministers took the oath. ”Congratulations @narendramodi for swearing in as the Prime Minister of India,” Sharif said on the micro-blogging site.
None of the Indian officials have reacted yet to this, but Modi replied back to the congratulatory messages sent by a few other leaders, including Finland Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and ex-Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan was among leaders from different countries who received an invitation to Modi’s first inauguration in 2014. Nonetheless, there has been a decline in bilateral relations after a series of terrorist attacks, most specifically the Pulwama suicide bombing in February 2019, implying 40 Indian soldiers, which almost led to a conflict between the two countries. Tensions escalated after India annulled the constitutional autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019, and Pakistan responded by downgrading diplomatic relations.
India has also not received a congratulatory message from Chinese President Xi Jinping for the successful formation of the government. On Saturday, Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, reacted to a congratulatory note from his counterpart in China, saying, “We will do our best to restore India-China relations so that it has a foundation of mutual respect, mutual interest, and mutual sensitivity.”
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