Rajnath Singh, the Indian defense minister, will host the in-person gathering of defense ministers in Delhi on April 27 to 28 of 2023. Russia and China, two very important nations, will be there. Next week, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, defense ministers’ meetings will take place in Delhi with the participation of the Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu and the Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu. For the first occasion since the start of the Russia-Ukraine crisis last year, the Russian defense minister will travel to India.
This regional intergovernmental organization with eight members, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) encompasses more than 60% of the Eurasian continent, 40% of the world’s population, and 30% of the world’s GDP. Prior to joining as a full member, India has a long-standing relationship with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). India was given observer status in the grouping in 2005, and in 2017 it was fully admitted.
At the Samarkand summit in Uzbekistan last year, India was awarded the group’s leadership. Leading up to the summit in July, India is hosting important ministerial sessions.
High-level engagements, such as the recent visit of Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov for the 24th India-Russia Inter-governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC), have helped maintain India-Russian relations despite the conflict.
The two nations’ defense cooperation has also developed from a straightforward buyer-seller arrangement to a more extensive partnership that includes cooperative research, development, manufacture, and marketing of cutting-edge defense technology and systems.
The 2020 Galwan incident, in which China attacked the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh, killing 20 Indian soldiers, would be the first time since then that the Chinese defense minister Shangfu will travel to Delhi. India is seen as playing the role of a mediator, a non-aligned country which strategises its own policies without being influenced by the West. This meeting is likely to have a lot of discussions around the emerging fragility of world politics according to some observers.
Since then, relations have suffered greatly due to ongoing Chinese provocations, such as laying claims to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Following the visit of the new Chinese FM Qin Gang this year for the G20 foreign ministers meeting, the previous Chinese FM Wang Yi visited India last year.
Since Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was revoked in 2019, relations between the two countries have been frozen, including Islamabad’s suspension of bus and train connections. This is the first ministerial visit from Pakistan to India since that time. Hina Rabbani Khar, a Pakistani FM, made her last trip to India in 2011. However, Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Pakistani Prime Minister, traveled to Amritsar, India, in 2016 to attend the Heart of Asia meet on Afghanistan.
A regional intergovernmental organization with eight members, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) encompasses more than 60% of the Eurasian continent, 40% of the world’s population, and 30% of the world’s GDP. Prior to joining as a full member, India has a long-standing relationship with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). India was given observer status in the grouping in 2005, and in 2017 it was fully admitted.
