There would be no foreign leader as the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations, but a day later Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host the first India-Central Asia Summit in a virtual format on January 27. Prior to 2021, the last time the celebrations didn’t have a chief guest was in 1966, when Indira Gandhi was sworn in as prime minister on January 24 after the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri on January 11. There were also no chief guests at the celebrations in 1952 and 1953.
No guest for the second time in a row. This is the second year in a row the government has had to cancel invitations to chief guests due to the COVID-19 pandemic after U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was unable to attend the celebrations in 2021. Last year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson cancelled his visit to attend the Republic Day parade as the Chief Guest due to rising COVID-19 cases in his country. In 1966 when no Chief Guest was present at the event which was held days after the demise of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent and the death of nuclear scientist Homi Bhabha in an air crash. Foreign leaders have graced the Republic Day parades every year barring 1952, 1953 and 1966.
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| Sukarno First Chief Guest in India's Republic day |
The then Indonesian President Sukarno was the first chief guest to grace Republic Day in 1950. In 2020, Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro was the chief guest. In 2018, the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leadership comprising 10 heads of states were present at the Republic Day parade.
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