Sri Lankan President Dissanayake's India visit begins on December 15

Sri Lanka's President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is expected to travel to India from December 15th onwards, with the key day of engagement being December 16th, when he will meet top Indian leadership, including PM Narendra Modi. 

This will be Dissanayake's first foreign visit abroad after taking charge as president in September this year.

The November parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka saw Dissanayake's National People's Power (NPP) coalition getting a landslide victory. The coalition got 159 seats out of the 225 seats, transforming the political landscape of the country since it is for the first time that a Sinhala-Buddhist party has won in the predominantly Tamil areas in the north. 

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He is the first top leader of Sri Lanka who is not from the nation's political elites, and his victory is seen as a sea change in the country's post-colonial political history.

After his win in the parliamentary elections, the Indian high commissioner to Sri Lanka, Santosh Jha had met him. After congratulating him on his election victory, the Indian high commissioner also extended an invitation to the Sri Lankan leader to visit India.

The Indian high commissioner had also called on Dissanayake when he became president and congratulated him on "winning the people's mandate". Both times, the Indian high commissioner was the first foreign envoy to meet him, which shows the strong ties between the two countries and continued engagement as well.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake, often referred to by his initials AKD, visited India in early 2024 and met India's external affairs minister, Dr S Jaishankar, and NSA Ajit Doval. His upcoming visit will be as the President of Sri Lanka, with a big parliamentary majority. 

In October, India's external affairs minister, Dr S Jaishankar, had visited Sri Lanka, which was the first high-level engagement between India and Sri Lanka after the election of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

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During the visit, EAM Jaishankar met President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, and Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath. 

AKDs' visit will be key in continuing the India and Sri Lanka engagement with a focus on economic recovery and connectivity—both physical with talks of a land bridge and a petroleum pipeline to financial connectivity with India's UPI being extended to Sri Lanka.

India played a key role in the economic recovery of Sri Lanka during the massive economic crisis with bailout support of $4 billion. 

Delhi provided currency swaps to help Sri Lanka manage its foreign exchange shortages and supplied diesel, petrol, and other essentials like food grains through credit lines, which were crucial for maintaining basic services.

However, the fishing issue remains a point of contention between the two nations. Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan custody have been an irritant, though both countries have sought to resolve it under the Joint Working Group mechanism.

India has also been calling for reconciliation on the Tamil issue and implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that aims to give autonomy to the country's Tamil community.