Roy has been a flag waver of dissent in the country. She has been an unrelenting critic of the Modi administration and its impact on India's democratic fabric
Om Birla was elected as Speaker of the lower house of the Parliament by a voice vote - the first in decades owing to a lack of consensus between NDA and INDIA.
If the visit goes ahead, it will be Modi’s first trip to Russia since 2019, and also the first since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022.