New Delhi: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not be travelling to Kazakhstan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)’s annual summit next month.
It is learnt that the host government has conveyed only a couple of days ago that the Indian leader will not be attending the summit which will take place on July 3-4.
The official reason for cancelling the visit is that the dates were too close to the first session of the Indian parliament, which runs from June 24 to July 3.
The Indian government had previously confirmed his trip to Astana to the host, and an advance security team had already visited the Kazakh capital. Just as the results of the Indian polls were announced, the Russian President’s aide said on June 4 that Putin was looking forward to meeting with the Indian leader at Astana “in the light of the elections in India”.
The decision to skip the SCO summit contrasts with Modi’s trip to Italy for the G7 summit during the first week of his third term. Although India is not a G7 member, it was invited along with other major Global South countries to attend an outreach session.
Since 2014, Modi has attended six summits of heads of states of SCO in person, including two when India was only a member.
When Modi was first elected in 2014, then newly appointed Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj represented India at that year’s SCO summit. However, Modi attended all five subsequent annual summits.
After the completion of 2019 elections, Modi did a quick bilateral trip first to Sri Lanka and Maldives within two weeks. He also travelled to Bishkek for the SCO summit on June 14-15, 2019, while the Lok Sabha session commenced on June 17.
Due to Covid, the summit was a virtual one in 2020. However, it was a physical meeting for all leaders in September 2021, except for Modi who dialled in through video from New Delhi. He was back in Central Asia in 2022 to attend the Samarkand summit.
However, during India’s first chairmanship of the SCO last year, the summit was converted into a virtual conference with a last-minute announcement.
Modi’s decision to skip the summit means that there will be no encounter with Chinese President Xi Jinping or Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. There are no signs of thaw with Pakistan, and Modi’s Twitter exchange with Taiwan’s President and the visit of a US Congressional delegation to meet the Dalai Lama have already sparked sharp protests from China in the last few weeks.
The Indian PM is anticipated to attend the BRICS summit later this year in Russia, where Xi is also expected to be present
India had joined SCO with two aims in mind, to expand interaction with central Asian countries and to influence regional security policies.
Even as the Modi government moved closer to Washington, India’s participation in the SCO was seen as a symbol of its strategic autonomy. This dual approach allowed India to be part of the Quad while also engaging in groupings like the SCO, which are largely dominated by Russia and China.
