India's my second home, Aung San Suu Kyi tells PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday had a meeting with Nobel laureate and Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in his first interaction with the pro-democracy icon.

The meeting at the presidential suite at Park Royal Hotel here where the prime minister is put up, came on a day when he had a string of bilateral meetings with world leaders and participated in the 12th India-ASEAN summit.

Myanmar is in the midst of a national debate on whether to allow Suu Kyi, chairperson and general secretary of the National League for Democracy, to contest the 2015 parliamentary elections, which she is barred from at present due to a provision in the Constitution.

Suu Kyi had visited India in November 2012.

She spent several years in India during her early days when her mother Daw Khin Yi was Ambassador to India. She studied at LadyShriramCollege in Delhi and also spent some time as a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla in 1987.

After Modi’s meeting with Suu Kyi, spokesman of the ministry of external affairs Syed Akbaruddin tweeted that the Myanmarese leader told the prime minister that India was her “second home”.

“India is my second home - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to @PMOIndia,” Akbaruddin tweeted.