Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not attend the 24th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, last week. Instead, the External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar headed the Indian delegation and read the PM’s remarks at the Astana summit.
During the discussions, the EAM emphasised New Delhi’s long-term priorities at SCO, highlighting terrorism, robust connectivity, respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity, and recognising the critical importance of Central Asia to the forum. He criticised the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor for violating India’s sovereignty in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
New Delhi seeks to reconfigure the SCO platform into a development-focused entity rather than one with an anti-Western agenda. And that was reflected in the Indian intervention.
Reassessing India’s SCO engagement
The SCO was founded in 2001 to catalyse collaborative efforts on regional, geopolitical, and geostrategic challenges. In 2005, India, Pakistan, and Iran were granted observer status. New India and Islamabad became full members in 2017.
India’s main focus at the SCO was to eradicate terrorism and terrorist groups from its northwest border while also promoting connectivity and socio-economic development in Eurasia.
From the beginning, the SCO prioritised combatting terrorism, separatism, and extremism as outlined in Article 1 of its charter. India’s main focus at the SCO was to eradicate terrorism and terrorist groups from its northwest border while also promoting connectivity and socio-economic development in Eurasia. However, despite the SCO’s vision, some member countries used terrorism as a foreign policy tool to propel terrorism in Eurasia and against India.
