Meet and Greet with Mrs. Preneet Kaur, Minister of State for External Affairs, Government of India

Toronto, Ontario, June 11, 2011:

Canada India Foundation meets with India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, Mrs. Preneet Kaur

Canada India Foundation organized a meeting of Greater Toronto’s Indo-Canadian community leaders at the Hilton Garden Inn Airport, on June 11, with the Minister of State for External Affairs, Mrs. Preneet Kaur, who was visiting Toronto as the leader of the Indian delegation to the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBDCanada2011) held on June 9 and 10. The meeting was facilitated through the offices of the Consul General of India in Toronto, Mrs. Preeti Saran, who also graced the occasion.

CIF Executives Ramesh Chotai, Aditya Jha, Vasu Chanchlani, Deepak Ruparell, Surjit Babra, Dr. Atul Tolia, Vikram Khurana, Laj Prasher and Barj Dhahan were joined by community leaders and representatives of Indo-Canadian organizations such as Pradeep Sood, Rana Sarkar, Suresh Madan, Vinay Nagpal, Satish Thakkar, Kam Rathee, Ajit Khanna, Pankaj Mehra, Srinivasan Venkatesh, Balraj Deol, Gurdev Mann and several members of Toronto’s Punjabi community in welcoming Mrs. Kaur on behalf of their respective organizations and the GTA community as a whole.

Addressing the attendees, Mrs. Kaur spoke highly of her interaction with the Indo-Canadian community during her stay in Toronto and exhorted members of the community to maintain and strengthen ties to India. Stating that she was an Indian, Punjabi and Sikh in that order, and proud of all those associations, she sent a message to members of the Indian diaspora to see themselves as people of Indian origin ahead of their linguistic and religious identities. Following her address, Mrs. Kaur joined the participants for lunch and spent considerable time and in interacting on a person-to-person basis with every participant.