This time the President of Egypt will attend the Republic Day celebrations as the chief guest. It was told by the Foreign Ministry that on Republic Day 2023, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi will be the foreign guest. The formal invitation sent to al-Sisi by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was handed over to him by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on October 16.

Let us inform that both the countries have celebrated the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations this year. Last month, India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh met President el-Sisi during their visit to Egypt. 

In a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs, it was said that Egypt has been invited as the guest country during India's chairmanship of G-20 in 2022-23. It said, "India and Egypt enjoy friendly relations based on civilizational and deep people-to-people ties."

Leaders of friendly countries have been gracing Republic Day celebrations since the 1950s. In 1950, Sukarno, the then President of Indonesia, was invited as the chief guest. In 1952, 1953 and 1966, no foreign leader attended the Republic Day celebrations as the chief guest.

In the year 2021, the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was invited as the chief guest but he canceled his visit due to increasing cases of Kovid-19 in Britain. This year India invited the leaders of five Central Asian republics to the Republic Day celebrations.

At the same time, in the Republic Day celebrations in 2018, the leaders of all the 10 countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) were present in the Republic Day Parade. In 2020, Jair Bolsonaro, the then President of Brazil, was the chief guest. Former US President Barack Obama (2015), Russian President Vladimir Putin (2007), former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (2008) and François Hollande (2016) have also been chief guests at Republic Day celebrations in the past.