Citing the popular election slogan “Modi hai to mumkin hai”, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has sought to take the bilateral relationship with India to the next level and said the Trump and

Modi Administrations have a “unique opportunity” to make it happen.

“As Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi said in his latest campaign, ‘Modi hai to mumkin hai,’ or ‘Modi makes it possible’, I’m looking forward to exploring what’s possible between our people,” Pompeo said in his major India policy speech at the India Ideas Summit of US-India Business Council on Wednesday.

Pompeo said he knew Narendra Modi would be re-elected as India’s Prime Minister and was not surprised by his landslide victory in the general election.

Addressing a gathering on Wednesday, Pompeo said he and his team were following the elections closely and were sure that Prime Minister Modi was a “new kind of leader” for the world’s most populous democracy.

“Just a few weeks ago, a truly historic election - 600 million Indians voted in the largest exercise of the franchise in history. And they gave Mr Modi a huge mandate,” Pompeo said at the ‘India Ideas Summit’ also attended by Google’s Indian-American CEO Sundar Pichai and top corporate executives from India and the US.

“Many observers were surprised by the result, but, frankly, I wasn’t. I’ve been watching closely. My team at the State Department is watching closely. And we knew that the prime minister was a new kind of leader for the world’s most populous democracy,” he said.

In the first back-to-back majority for a single party in over three decades, the Modi-led BJP won 303 out of 542 Lok Sabha seats that went to polls, handing out a crushing defeat to the Congress and many other political opponents. “Not since 1971 has an Indian Prime Minister been returned to office with a single-party majority, and - to borrow a phrase - he enjoyed an awful lot of winning. He is the son of a tea seller who worked his way up to governing a state for 13 years and now leads one of the world’s truly emerging powers,” Pompeo said.

Prime Minister Modi has made economic development for the poorest Indians a priority and millions who once went without light bulbs now have electricity and millions who lacked cookstoves now have them, the Secretary of State said.

“It’s interesting that young Indians constituted one of the Prime Minister’s largest voting blocks, one of his biggest groups of support in this most recent election. I think that tells you something. It tells you something that Indian voters think Prime Minister Modi can and will open up a new, more prosperous future for each of them,” he said.