NEW DELHI: Ahead of his day-long trip to India on November 14, British PM David Cameron has reached out to BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi and stated that his government is engaging with the Gujarat Chief Minister. However, Cameron has no plans to either meet Modi or travel to Ahmedabad in this trip.This is Cameron’s second trip to India this year. Even as he is only meeting his Indian counterpart at a business like interaction at the 7, Race Course Road, Cameron has set the tone of UK’s future engagement with India by wooing Modi in his interview to Indian TV channels in London. “Britain is a democracy. We talk to and engage with opposition parties in all countries - India included. If we think there are things that we have not got right, we can have free and frank discussions about those things,” Cameron told Indian news channels in London soon after he celebrated Diwali.As part of its engagement policy, British High Commissioner to India James Bevan met Modi in October 2012 in Gandhinagar . Further Bevan recently commented, “Gujarat is an important state and Narendra Modi is its Chief Minister…If we want stronger relations with India we can’t overlook Gujarat, can we?”Sources in the British government inform that in London’s assessment Modi has emerged as a leader of national stature in India and cannot be ignored. Since that assessment last year, the British government has been reaching out to Modi. Besides, the British government wants to expand its trade and investment links with India and Gujarat presents an excellent opportunity, sources said.The recent TV comments were not the first on Modi by Cameron in recent times. In an interview to The Eastern Eye, a weekly published by the Garavi Gujarat Group of newspapers, Cameron spoke about conviction in the 2002 riot cases. It is understood that the powerful Gujarati community in UK like the USA and Canada are playing an important back channel role to bring these countries closer to Modi.Last March, B r i t a i n’ s Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire met Modi in Gandhinagar and justified it as “a logical next step” in Britain’s relations with Gujarat. Swire is the first minister from UK, or for that matter any European country, to meet Modi after the 2002 riots.