On his third day in India, Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is in Varanasi today. The city geared up for his welcome as streets were decorated with his pictures, alongside Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath. Adityanath received Deuba from the Lal Bahadur Shastri Airport and accompanied Deuba during his Varanasi visit.
Deuba also visited the Kashi Vishwanath temple with his wife Arzu Rana Deuba. Amidst showering of flower petals and beats of 'Damru', various artistes performed traditional dances to welcome the prime minister.
Deuba and his wife performed 'rudrabhishek' -- a ritual to offer prayers to Lord Shiva -- at the Kashi Vishwanath temple and also watched a short-film showing the history of the Kashi Vishwanath Dham.
Earlier, the high-profile guests were greeted with cultural programmes, including various dance forms, at 15 places on the road from the airport to the Taj Hotel.
On Saturday, India and Nepal launched multiple initiatives as well as signed four crucial agreements in multiple domains. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nepal PM Deuba signed agreements on Nepal becoming the 105th member of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), technical cooperation in railways, supply of petroleum products and sharing of technical expertise in the petroleum sector between Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL) and Nepal Oil Corporation Ltd. (NOC).
They also witnessed the launch of the first passenger train service between India's Jayanagar and Nepal's Kurtha, the hand-over of the Solu corridor transmission project by India to Nepal and the progress of the construction of 132 health facilities across 10 districts in Nepal under a Government of India (GoI) grant.
The two countries announced the launch of the Indian RuPay card in Nepal, with the domestic variant of the RuPay card (roughly 83 per cent of all RuPay cards issued) to be functional on about 1400 Point of Sale (POS) machines in Nepal.
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