Sco Summit 2024 : Prime Minister Modi has abstained from the meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). PM Modi will not go to this meeting to be held in Kazakhstan. However, he will be represented by India’s External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar. In this meeting, the activities of SCO in the last 20 years will be reviewed and ways to increase mutual cooperation will be discussed. Many meanings are being inferred from PM Modi’s absence.
Some believe that China’s interference in this organization is increasing, hence India is keeping distance from it. This group is now becoming anti-West. At the same time, some say that Modi has not gone because of the Parliament session. Expert Brahma Chellani said in an article that India’s uneasiness is about China, because China’s influence in SCO is continuously increasing. If India is left out of this organization, the rest of the countries are China belt.
Among the nine SCO countries, India is the only country with complete democracy. In 2001, the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan together launched it in Shanghai. China’s President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistan’s PM Shahbaz Sharif have reached Kazakhstan to attend the SCO meeting.
That’s why PM Modi did not go to Kazakhstan
In the BBC report, international affairs expert Sanjay Pandey was quoted as saying that PM Modi’s busy schedule has increased after the formation of the new government. Last year, when India was the chairperson of SCO, we had also organized a virtual summit. Somewhere the implication can be drawn from this that SCO is not a priority for India. It is also possible that PM Modi does not want to share the stage with President Xi Jinping and Pakistani PM Shahbaz Sharif.
India’s relations with both China and Pakistan have been deteriorating for a long time. PM Modi is going to visit Russia next week, where he will meet President Putin. It is believed that the absence of PM Modi in SCO may disappoint the leaders of Central Asian countries. Former Foreign Secretary of India Kanwal Sibal has written on social media that PM Modi is not able to attend the SCO summit due to the session in Parliament, he will compensate for this by visiting Russia in July.