• Canadian PM to address finance leaders before meeting Indian PM.
• Carney wants more than double two-way trade with India by 2030.
• India hopes Canada to support to expand nuclear power capacity.
  

Canada PM begins key India visit, seeking to boost trade

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney landed in India on Friday for a visit he hopes would reset ties and double trade, offsetting the damage from his country’s fracturing relations with the United States.

Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi of orchestrating a deadly campaign against Sikh activists in Canada.

He arrived in the financial hub of Mumbai, where he is expected to address business leaders before travelling to the capital and meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, the final day of his visit.

Indian broadcasters showed a police convoy as Carney was whisked through Mumbai.

Carney’s office said discussions would focus on “ambitious new partnerships in trade, energy, technology and artificial intelligence (AI), talent and culture, and defence”.

Last year, the two countries agreed to resume negotiations on a proposed free-trade agreement.

Carney has said he wanted to more than double two-way trade with India by 2030, eyeing an annual target of $51 billion.

Before Carney took office last year, Ottawa accused Modi’s government of direct involvement in the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a naturalised Canadian citizen who was part of a fringe group that advocated for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan.

Khalistan members have been blamed for the assassination of an Indian prime minister and the bombing of a passenger jet.

Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government further alleged India had directed a campaign of intimidation against Sikh activists across Canada.

India has repeatedly dismissed the allegations, which sent diplomatic relations into freefall, with both nations expelling a string of top diplomats in 2024.

Ties improved after Carney took office in March 2025, and envoys have since been restored.

Asked whether Canadian concerns about transnational repression would feature at the New Delhi talks, Foreign Minister Anita Anand told reporters: “That is always at the forefront of our minds.”

An Indian court acquitted the former chief minister of the capital Delhi on Friday in a long-running corruption probe the man had called a “political conspiracy” by the ruling party.

Opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal was Delhi’s chief minister before losing elections in 2025 in the midst of the judicial proceedings.

Kejriwal, 57, who spent several months in jail after he was arrested in March 2024 on accusations that his administration received kickbacks from the allocation of liquor licenses, wept as he left court.

“Truth has won,” Kejriwal told reporters after the verdict, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah of using a “political conspiracy” to finish AAP.

On Friday, a Delhi court cleared him, his former deputy Manish Sisodia and 21 others of all charges.

A key opponent to Modi, he had consistently denied wrongdoing.

Rekha Gupta, a member of Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, was elected as chief minister of the sprawling megacity of more than 30 million people in February 2025.

Kejriwal began his career as a tax collector but quit his civil service job to become an anti-corruption crusader, bringing him national fame.

Several of Modi’s opponents have faced criminal investigation or trial in recent years, including two state chief ministers.

In August 2025, the government introduced a bill to remove politicians if they are arrested and detained for 30 days, which opponents called a “chilling” bid to crush constitutional safeguards.

WASHINGTON: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he had a productive meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, discussing issues including housing and student detentions by federal immigration authorities.

It was the second meeting between them since Mamdani’s mayoral election win late last year. Mamdani is a Democrat and Trump a Republican.

Mamdani posted a photo with Trump on social media. “I had a productive meeting with President Trump this afternoon. I’m looking forward to building more housing in New York City,” Mamdani wrote.

Mamdani said he raised concerns with Trump about a detention on Thursday of Columbia University student Elmina Aghayeva from Azerbaijan by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and that Trump later informed him she will be “released imminently.”

The federal Homeland Security Department subsequently said it freed Aghayeva and launched removal proceedings against her.

While both men have been critical of each other’s policy positions and hold radically different worldviews, their previous meeting in November was unexpectedly friendly.

In that meeting too, they spoke about bringing down the price of housing. A former real estate developer, Trump had brightened at Mamdani’s call for more housing in New York.

Making housing more affordable has been one of Trump’s pledges ahead of the midterm elections in late 2026 as prices for housing remain significantly higher than they were a few years ago. Cost of living and affordability were also issues at the heart of Mamdani’s mayoral victory.

Trump reiterated his pledge in his State of the Union speech this week and has announced some policies aimed at addressing the problem. Still, US mortgage rates remain high and the housing supply in most of the country is short of what is needed to meet demand. This leaves the cost of home ownership increasingly out of reach for many families.

Economists and trade groups say Trump’s aggressive trade and immigration policies have raised prices for building materials and appliances and undercut labour supply, making it harder for builders to ramp up housing construction.

Mamdani has criticised Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown, especially his use of ICE agents and deportation attempts, along with the president’s policies towards Israel’s war in Gaza.

Mamdani’s office said he handed a list to the White House of four pro-Palestinian students battling deportation attempts and asked for help to dismiss those cases.

The four names were Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung, Mohsen Mahdawi and Leqaa Kordia. Kordia, who was recently hospitalised after a seizure in detention and has lost dozens of family members in Gaza, remains detained by ICE while the other three were released over the last year.

Trump has cast pro-Palestinian protesters as antisemitic. Demonstrators, including some Jewish groups, say he wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories with antisemitism, as well as their advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for extremism.