Priyanka Gandhi on Bangladesh trip from Feb 3

DHAKA: Priyanka Vadra, the daughter of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, will visit Bangladesh from tomorrow to see the non-formal schooling system run by a leading NGO, just months after a similar tour to the country by her brother Rahul.

"She will arrive in Dhaka tomorrow on a two-day tour when she will visit two BRAC schools in (suburban) Ashulia area and join Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at a dinner at her (private) Sudhasadan residence," an official spokesman told the media.

BRAC, formerly known as the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, is the country's largest NGO, also known for its success stories in running micro-credit programmes.

The official said elite Special Security Force (SSF) troops would provide the security and coordinate the visit of the daughter of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Priyanka is also expected to hold a meeting with senior officials of BRAC.

She would be the first high-profile Indian dignitary to visit Bangladesh since the December 29 general elections installed the new government of Hasina, who has a long personal relationship with the Gandhi family.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee is set to visit Dhaka on a two-day tour next week.

The 37-year-old Priyanka's visit comes five months after her elder brother, Lok Sabha MP and Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi's low-profile five-day Bangladesh tour to witness the country's success stories in fighting poverty and developing standard of life of rural masses.

4:28 PM In an interview to BBC in 1999, Priyanka said "Politics is not a strong pull, the people are. And I can do things for them without being in politics."

Rahul visited Bangladesh in August last year at the invitation of BRAC and Grameen Bank of Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, whose experiment of poor men's banking earned Bangladesh the repute of being the home of microcredit.

Rahul's grandmother and former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi had paid a visit to Bangladesh in March 1972, while his father and ex-premier Rajiv Gandhi had toured the country twice.