India / Indo-US ties will pick up, Biden no stranger to India: Jaishankar

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, on Tuesday, said that the Indian government will face no problems in taking forward ties with the US under the Joe Biden administration because of the strong element of bipartisan support for the bilateral relationship.

While participating in an online discussion organised by the think tanks Centre for International Governance Innovation and Gateway House, Jaishankar said that he is confident that India will pick up where it had left off (with the Donald Trump administration).

“I think that will be the case as well here and I say that because within the American politics, it’s not just that we deal with the administration of the day, we also tend to deal with the Congress. American politics by its nature has very strong elements of bipartisanship,” Jaishankar said.

While talking about India’s relationship with Joe Biden, Jaishankar said that President-elect Biden is “not a stranger to India” and India has dealt with him in his former roles as vice president in the Barack Obama administration and as ranking Democratic member and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“He (Biden) is very much part of this period when Indo-American relations underwent a radical transformation, which I reasonably date back to former President Bill Clinton’s visit to India in 2000,” he said.

“You had four presidents and you really cannot find more dissimilar people – Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. But one issue and one relationship to which all of them were committed was the Indian relationship,” he further added.

Calling both India and US natural partners, the External Affairs Minister said, there is a “very strong element of structural predictability and a certain ballast” in the India-US relationship.