Queen Elizabeth II will spend more time in India than earlier scheduled during her October visit of the country.
The Queen will spend several days in South India in a newly announced programme that makes Amritsar only one stop on a busy tour.
Buckingham Palace has confirmed that the Queen will go ahead with her visit to Amritsar in Punjab despite the controversy surrounding that trip. The Queen is now due to spend considerable time in the South, including a brief visit to the Periyar wildlife sanctuary in Kerala, officials said.
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The programme that officials had announced earlier had spoken of the Queen and her husband Prince Philip visiting India and Pakistan for only two to three days each.
According to the new dates announced, the Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, known more popularly as the Duke of Edinburgh, will visit Pakistan from October 7 to 12 and India from October 12 to 18.
During their week-long visit to India Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip will occasionally have different programmes. They include a visit to Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad organised exclusively for the Duke of Edinburgh.
The state visit by the monarch and the Duke of Edinburgh will begin in New Delhi. The Queen will spend three nights in New Delhi, where she will be a guest of President K.R. Narayanan and stay at Rashtrapati Bhavan, which was home to the British Viceroy before Independence.
On October 14 she will visit the Golden Temple at Amritsar and also make a stop at Jallianwala Bagh, where she will lay a wreath at the memorial to the peaceful protestors killed in firing by British troops in April 1919. There will be no speeches of apology.
Officials here say that the gesture of her presence at Jallianwala Bagh is apology enough from the Queen and the government of the day for the massacre in which 379 persons were killed and 1,200 injured. She will visit Amritsar only briefly and return the same day.
The Queen will then visit Chennai for three days, from where she will proceed to Kochi. It is on the last leg of this tour that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will have separate visits. The Duke of Edinburgh will visit Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Hyderabad separately on October 15 and 16. He will rejoin the Queen on October 17 for a visit together to Chennai.
On arrival in New Delhi, the first formal ceremony will be the laying of a wreath at Rajghat. She will later open a British Museum exhibition titled The Enduring Image, which will be followed by a media reception and a state banquet. The day after the Amritsar visit, the Duke of Edinburgh will visit the Indian Ex-Services League Headquarters in New Delhi and then lay a wreath at India Gate, which was built by the British as a memorial to British soldiers who had died in India during World War I.
The same day, the Queen will open a British exhibition in New Delhi titled Towards 2000. She will later visit the Indian headquarters of the British Council. This will be followed by a visit to the Delhi Brotherhood Society, a non-governmental organisation. She will also lay a wreath at the Delhi War Cemetery, where many British soldiers were buried.
In Chennai, the first programme of the Queen will be a visit to the MGR Film City, where she will meet many South Indian film stars. She will then visit the Ekambareswara temple in Kancipuram. The Governor of Tamil Nadu will then host a dinner for her.
The next day she will attend a lunch hosted by the Governor of Kerala. She will then visit a church, a synagogue, an international commodity exchange for pepper and spices, and a British funded charity project.
One of the more popular events of her visit will be a cricket match she will watch briefly at Chennai on the evening of October 17. Former Indian and British cricketers will play in the charity match.
Meanwhile, on his separate programme, the Duke of Edinburgh will lay a wreath at Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad. and visit Akshardam, a pilgrimage centre for Hindus. In Mumbai the following day he will visit the offices of the Western Naval Command and then open a commercial seminar on board the ship HMS Westminster.
He will then move on to Hyderabad where he will visit the Indian Air Force Academy and attend a reception hosted by the Governor of Andhra Pradesh. On the afternoon of October 18, the Queen and her husband will leave Chennai for London.
In Pakistan the visit will begin in Islamabad. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will spend two nights in Islamabad and then one in Lahore. They will then visit Karachi. The Duke of Edinburgh will separately visit Chitral. In Islamabad the Queen will visit a mosque and address the National Assembly. She will open a British Council exhibition.
Cricket is on the agenda in Pakistan as well. She will see some of the match between Pakistan and South Africa at the Rawalpindi cricket club. In Karachi she will lay a wreath at the tomb of Pakistans founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The highlight of the Lahore visit will be a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at Lahore Fort. There are no events on the last day of her stay in Pakistan, October 11.