The visit has been scheduled a month after the visit of President, Maithripala Sirisena, to New Delhi.

The previous bilateral visit to Sri Lanka by an Indian Prime Minister was in 1987, when Rajiv Gandhi traveled to Colombo to sign the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord with the then Sri Lankan President, J. R. Jayewardene. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in Colombo in 2008 to attend the SAARC summit and handed over its chairmanship to the then President, Mahinda Rajapaksa.

However, he skipped the Commonwealth Summit that Sri Lanka hosted in November 2013, a decision that was strongly criticised by sections in New Delhi and Colombo.