GANDHINAGAR: Vibrant Gujarat Summit (VGS) 2017 is going to be the grandest of all summits. This is evident from the guest list of summit which includes the presidents of two countries, prime ministers of two other countries, several other top international leaders and many key ministers.
India's minister of external affairs (MEA) is coordinating the participation of foreign dignitaries. The Gujarat government has, so far, received confirmation of nine foreign dignitaries.
Information received from the state's industry and mines department says that the MEA has instructed that state guest arrangement be made for the president of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta; president of Rwanda Paul Kagame; prime minister of Portugal António Luís Santos da Costa; prime minister of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic; deputy prime minister of Russia Igor Shuvalov; deputy prime minister Piotr Glinski; and foreign affairs minister of France Jean-Marc Ayrault.
Other dignitaries mentioned in the list of guests who would be coming for VGS are minister of economy , trade and industry , Japan, Hiroshige Seko; and British ministerial delegation from UK led by Priti Patel, secretary of state for international development, UK. “From the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sweden, Singapore and some important Middle East countries, official delegations are expected,“ said a Gujarat official.
Vibrant Gujarat now has a total of 12 official partner countries, namely , -Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, UAE, UK and USA and Sweden.
Six Nobel laureates, including Indian-origin structural biologist
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
, have agreed to take part of the Vibrant Gujarat Summit scheduled for January next year.
American Nobel prize-winning scientist Harold E Varmus; American physical chemist and chemical physicist William Esco Moerner; American cell biologist Randy Wayne Schekman; Israeli crystallographer Ada E Yonath; and American theoretical physicist David Jonathan Gross are the other Nobel-winning scientists who will be present at the biennial event. The laureates would be part of the Nobel Prize Series Exhibition and Nobel Laureate Symposium which are happening for the first time in India at a Vibrant Gujarat Summit.