WASHINGTON: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting New York and Houston in the third week of September, continuing New Delhi's tradition of engagement with the Trump administration and the Indian-American community in the US on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meet.

The Prime Minister will attend the UNGA session in New York City between September 20-23 and take a day off to visit Houston to meet and greet the large Indian-American community in Texas, according to community organisers who have been apprised of his program. It is not known yet if he will visit Washington DC, but it is more than likely he will meet President Trump and other world leaders on the sidelines of the UN meet.

Indian Prime Ministers in the past seldom went beyond the New York-Washington DC axis, but Modi made an exception in when he made a foray into San Francisco in 2015 to engage with Silicon Valley stalwarts and newbies, visiting the campus of Facebook and Tesla during the visit.

Since then there have been calls from the Indian-American community in various US cities and it boiled down to a toss-up between Chicago and Houston, both with large "desi" population. Houston won, apparently because vice-president Venkiah Naidu recently visited Chicago, and also because the Texas city is an energy hub.

Counting Dallas and other nearby cities, there are an estimated 250,000+ people of Indian origin in Texas.

