Will PM Modi visit China for the SCO summit? Government says…
'The SCO meeting is some months away. The participation by countries are finalised as per the mutual convenience. We will let everyone know in an appropriate time,' MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, responding to media query about the possibility of PM Modi's visit to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit scheduled next month.
MEA reaction came amid reports suggesting that PM Modi will likely visit China for the SCO summit.
This, if confirmed, will be PM Modi's first visit to China after the two neighbouring countries' ties came under severe strain following the 2020 military standoff in Galwan along the Line of Actual Control(LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
A possible meeting between Prime Minister Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping is especially anticipated during the summit, the reports suggested. The two leaders met last during the BRICS summit in Russia in October 2024.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday that leaders from more than 20 countries and heads of 10 international organisations will attend the Tianjin Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and related events next month.
The SCO Tianjin Summit will be held from 31 August- 1 September, Wang said during a joint press meeting with SCO Secretary-General Nurlan Yermekbayev, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The SCO meeting is some months away. The participation by countries are finalised as per the mutual convenience.
Apart from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders of the SCO member states are expected to attend the summit.
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The Wire
11 minutes ago
- The Wire
When Vajpayee Chose to Fall in Line After Godhra
The following is an excerpt from Abhishek Choudhary's The Believer's Dilemma: A.B. Vajpayee and the Ascent of the Hindu Right. Even in late March 2002, after a month of riots, half a dozen people were getting killed in Gujarat every day. Vajpayee frequently called up Modi, often late in the night, for updates, advice, and rebukes. But his ire was not personal. He knew the failure was a mix of Modi's deliberate administrative inefficiency and the Sangh Parivar's planned vendetta. He hated Modi for strengthening himself by polarizing the atmosphere in Gujarat, though he was perfectly aware of the Sangh affiliates' intricate tapestry on the ground. Had Modi not allowed the local BJP–VHP– Bajrang Dal cadres to vent their anger, he risked becoming unpopular among his peers. But soon everyone – eight of the NDA's twenty-three allies, opposition, media, civil society – publicly demanded Modi's head.* Vajpayee thought it prudent to rehabilitate him in Delhi. He flirted with the idea of swapping Modi and his fellow Gujarati, Kashiram Rana, the textiles minister. (Talking to Delhi journalists in public, Modi had, in the recent past, mocked Rana as a 'maans khaane waala' – a meat-eater – not sufficiently self-aware that most Delhi journalists ate meat too, and what worked as a great joke in Gujarat didn't land nearly as well in the national capital.) Abhishek Choudhary's The Believer's Dilemma: A.B. Vajpayee and the Ascent of the Hindu Right. Picador (May 2025) Simultaneously, however, a four-member team was meeting every week at 7 RCR – Vajpayee, Advani, Kushabhau Thakre, Madan Das Devi – to discuss the matter. The other three disagreed. The party had lost all major assembly polls. Gujarat was the last bastion, awaiting polls in less than a year. Firing Modi would be a top-down decision, which would pit the centre against the local cadres, worsening the confusion on the ground. Instead, a mid-way solution might be to call for early elections. There seemed to be a Hindu resurgence at work, and they calculated that the party would massively benefit. Winning the POTO vote on 26 March proved that he could easily survive the exodus of an ally or two. Vajpayee still wanted to play safe and replace Modi. The prime minister was to make a week-long foreign trip in early April 2002. Partly out of the anxiety that he might be grilled abroad about evading his executive responsibilities, he decided to visit the riottorn state. In preparation, Vajpayee summoned Modi to explain why the rehabilitation had been sluggish. On 27 March, while Modi made a PowerPoint presentation at 7 RCR, Vajpayee sat with a pout. He snubbed the unflappable chief minister when the latter defended himself, claiming he had no funds to build houses for the victims whose homes had been burnt and were now living in the relief camps. Well, raise money from private agencies, the boss rebutted, like Patel had for the earthquake victims. Modi complained of exaggerated media reports. Vajpayee countered that he was not bothered so much about media or opposition, but what should he tell the NDA allies who enquired why the killings had not stopped. Advani sat by awkwardly. The prime minister landed in Ahmedabad on the morning of 4 April. Three helicopters flew his delegation to Godhra, where the remains of the S6 coach lay near an abandoned building in the railway yard. Vajpayee climbed into the coach using a special wooden chair. He walked through the coach with a stiff face. Only Modi followed his boss into the coach, his calm face concealing the awkwardness of the occasion. On return, the helicopters landed at a football ground near the Kankaria relief camp in Ahmedabad, the majority of whose inhabitants were Hindus. This quickly done, Vajpayee left for the Shah-e-Alam camp. Modi had never visited Shah-e-Alam, the largest of all relief camps, sheltering Muslims. The PMO had rejigged Vajpayee's itinerary the previous evening to include it. Vajpayee entered to find a 4,000-strong crowd – miserable, grieving, and agitated – waiting for him. Among the first things he heard was a slogan directed at the chief minister: 'Modi – haaye, haaye!' As Vajpayee caressed a five-year-old orphan's head, a young man pointed at Modi and screamed: 'He is the killer.'27 Another victim who had lost six members of his family broke down, saying the attacking mob had said they had been ordered by the government: 'Upar se hukum hai.' Yet another one stooped to touch Vajpayee's feet, begging him to stop the violence. They were whisked away. His voice choked and eyes welled up, Vajpayee addressed the crowd, asking half to himself: 'Have satanic forces overtaken humanity?' He promised, amid applause, that the refugee camps would continue as long as necessary, and the government would rehabilitate them all; and that widows, orphans, and the destitute would receive money as part of relief packages. The visit was to be wrapped up with a press conference at Ahmedabad airport. Asked whether he was considering a change of guard in the state, Vajpayee responded: 'I don't think so.' To another question, Vajpayee answered that Hindus were capable of safeguarding themselves: 'It is the minorities who need protection.' The PMO had planted the 'one last question' on a friendly scribe. She asked if Vajpayee had a message for Modi sitting on his left. Vajpayee paused for a few seconds before replying that he 'would want the chief minister to adhere to rajdharma'. He took another long pause, then added: 'Rajdharma – this word is imbued with meanings. I adhere to this principle too, have been trying to.' Modi feigned a smile but was beginning to look embarrassed. The prime minister went on: 'A king cannot treat his subjects unequally – not on the basis of birth, or caste or religion.' Unable to fight his urge to stay quiet, Modi retorted that he was doing his job rather fine: 'Hum bhi wahi kar rahe hain, saheb.' The crowd chuckled at his audacious response. Vajpayee closed the press interaction with an oblique, half-sarcastic remark, which could be interpreted in whichever way: 'I am certain Narendrabhai is doing exactly that.' This exchange is often invoked as a mark of Vajpayee's liberalism. It was at best an executive head's pusillanimous appeal. It proved that Vajpayee was admitting Modi's culpability but he just could not find the courage to sack him. Here was a crafty patriarch balancing his contradictory loyalties, hoping to prolong his survival in office. If the prime minister felt embarrassed by his subordinate's audacity, he had only his ego to swallow. As he sat aboard his flight to Singapore, Vajpayee feared being humiliated abroad. That the cursed place was not the Hindi heartland, rather India's fastest-growing state, could scare away potential investors. By the time he landed, he had found an answer. In a post-9/11 world, it was easier to fix the causality: India's communal problems were a consequence of a global jihadi network. He felt further encouraged after his hosts informed him that the Al-Qaeda tentacles had touched Singapore, and that they had recently arrested a dozen-odd suspects. The second leg of his trip, Singapore to Cambodia, was time-travel from the future into the past. His most significant engagement was signing an agreement to restore the Ta Prohm Temple in the Angkor Wat complex. Walking with the help of a stick, he took in the remnants of the old Hindu state of Kamboj, some of whose sky-high temples constructed a millennia ago still survived. While the prime minister was away, the Sangh Parivar carried out a fierce whisper campaign: Modi had to be defended at all costs; Vajpayee 2002: The Survivalist 337 was too out of sync with the party's dominant mood, too old in any case, and had led the party into one electoral mishap after the other. He had entered a fifth year of office: maybe he should demit in favour of Advani. The morning after he returned, he left for the national executive meet in Goa, where he had to formally deliver the verdict on Modi. Brajesh Mishra had arranged for the senior ministers to travel in Vajpayee's plane. Just before landing in Panaji, Advani agreed to ask Modi to offer – though only as roleplay – his resignation. At the national executive that afternoon, everyone played by the script. Though visibly tense, Modi rose to make a passionate defence of his conduct in the aftermath of Godhra. At the end, he offered his head. Suddenly, most of the 175-odd members gathered there began a chorus in his support. It was a stage-managed decision to be sure, so much so that even the Gujarat chief minister's sworn foes – Keshubhai Patel, Pramod Mahajan – trimmed their sail and vigorously backed him. Even so, Vajpayee was surprised by the force of Modi's backing. The BJP president Jana Krishnamurthi announced that the final decision would be discussed at 8 p.m., after the prime minister returned from a rally he was to speak at in Panaji. His authority fading, Vajpayee chose to fall in line.
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First Post
11 minutes ago
- First Post
After 6 years, India and Nepal resume boundary talks; working group to meet on July 27-29
Boundary Working Group is the highest-level bilateral mechanism for border fieldwork between India and Nepal. The BWG handles the construction, restoration, and repair of boundary pillars and clearing no-man's land read more Nepal and India are all set to resume boundary talks on July 27–29 in New Delhi after a six-year pause, with the seventh Boundary Working Group (BWG) meeting, the highest-level bilateral mechanism for border fieldwork, set to address the resumption of technical tasks, reported Kathmandu Post, citing sources. 'The meeting has been fixed,' said Lok Bahadur Chettri, spokesperson at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 'It's a regular meeting which was halted due to Covid pandemic.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The BWG handles the construction, restoration, and repair of boundary pillars and clearing no-man's land, excluding disputed areas like Susta and Kalapani. Back in 2014, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Nepal visit, both nations had agreed to establish the BWG. It was also decided that Susta and Kalapani disputes will be addressed by foreign secretaries with BWG support. Prakash Joshi, director general of Nepal's Department of Survey, will lead the Nepali delegation, joined by representatives from foreign, home, defence, law, and land management ministries, plus experts and Armed Police Force members. Last BWG meeting The previous BWG meeting took place in Dehradun, India, in August 2019. It aimed to complete border tasks by 2022, but the Covid pandemic and a subsequent Nepal-India boundary dispute stalled progress. The dispute intensified in 2019–20 after India's map included Kalapani, prompting Nepal to push for BWG resumption in every high-level meeting since the pandemic. India, citing Covid, delayed BWG meetings but later assigned border tasks to security agencies. Nepal's Armed Police Force and India's Sashastra Seema Bal manage joint patrolling, intelligence, and local meetings to protect boundary pillars. A Nepali official attending the upcoming meeting told the Post it will pick up from 2019, reviewing progress and resuming fieldwork, inspections, pillar maintenance, and new pillar installations per BWG terms. It will also conduct a cross-border inventory to identify properties held by citizens in each other's territory, using GPS to monitor and establish boundaries and pillars. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The BWG is supported by the Survey Officials' Committee and Joint Field Survey Teams for technical input.
India.com
11 minutes ago
- India.com
We Will Do...: Indias BIG Remark On EU Sanctions, US Threat To Economy Over Russian Oil
India on Tuesday made it clear that it won't bow down to the sanctions by the European Union and threats to the economy issued by the United States over the purchase of Russian oil. Addressing media ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the United Kingdom, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said that energy security is the government of India's top concern, and it will do what is needed to be done. "We have been very clear that insofar as energy security is concerned, it is the highest priority of the government of India to provide energy security for the people of India, and we will do what we need to do with regard to that. On energy-related issues itself, also, as we have said previously, it is important not to have double standards and to have a clear-eyed perception of what the global situation is insofar as the broader energy market is concerned," said Misri. He said that while India understands the security situation confronting Europe, the rest of the world is also dealing with some kinds of issues. "We do understand that there is an important and serious security issue that is confronting Europe, but the rest of the world is also there. It is also dealing with issues that are existential for the rest of the world, and I think it's important to keep balance and perspective when talking about these issues," said Misri. Notably, Misri's comments came in the wake of the EU and the United States threatening India, China and Brazil against Russia ties. In its latest round of sanctions, the European Union has introduced stricter measures targeting Russian oil revenues. These include a lower price cap on Russian crude, restrictions on refined fuels produced from it, and new financial sanctions. The sanctions also extend to Rosneft's joint venture refinery in India and additional limitations on Russian banking access—all aimed at curbing Moscow's ability to fund its war efforts through energy exports. The new restrictions are expected to have ripple effects on countries such as India, Turkey, and the UAE, which import significant volumes of Russian crude oil, refine it, and then export fuels like diesel, petrol, and jet fuel to European markets. Meanwhile, the United States under the Trump administration has also taken a hard stance. President Donald Trump and other senior officials have issued warnings to countries like India, China, and Brazil—all part of the BRICS group—stating that continuing oil trade with Russia could lead to severe economic repercussions. In a televised interview on Fox News, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said, 'Here's what I would tell China, India, and Brazil: If you keep buying cheap Russian oil to allow this war to continue, we're going to tear up the hell out of you, and we're going to crush your economy.' He further added, 'What you're doing amounts to profiting off blood money, and we won't allow it to continue without consequences.'
