India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Pakistani counterpart Shahbaz Sharif on Tuesday for his return to the premiership, a rare expression of goodwill between leaders of the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Sharif was officially sworn in on Monday as prime minister for a second time.
The 72-year-old’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has formed a coalition government with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and several smaller factions.
“Congratulations to @CMShehbaz on being sworn in as the Prime Minister of Pakistan,” Modi said in a post on social media platform X.
Unusually for a senior Pakistani politician, Sharif visited India in 2013 when he was chief minister of Pakistan’s Punjab province.
He visited his family’s ancestral village on the Indian side of the frontier and met with then-prime minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, along with other officials.
Modi also attended a Sharif family wedding during a surprise trip to Pakistan in 2015, a year after the Hindu nationalist leader took office.
He was hosted by Sharif’s elder brother Nawaz, himself prime minister at the time.