Five Central Asian leaders may be chief guests of honour at the 2022 Republic Day parade in New Delhi on January 26.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is likely to hold a dialogue with his counterparts in these five nations – three of which share a border with Afghanistan – over the next weekend.
If the COVID situation permits and plans materialise, five Presidents — Kazakhstan’s Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Uzbekistan’s Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon, Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow and Kyrgyzstan’s Sadyr Japarov — are likely to visit Delhi in January.
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan share a border with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Earlier plans to invite countries of the BIMSTEC grouping, includes Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan, did not materialise, foreign office sources said.
National security advisors of the five countries recently came to Delhi for a regional security dialogue on Afghanistan, hosted by India’s NSA Ajit Doval.
India’s engagement with these Central Asian countries was first formulated in 2012, when the nation framed the “Connect Central Asia” policy. This was bolstered with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visits to these five countries in July 2015 — the first Indian Prime Minister to do so after these republics were born in the 1990s following the disintegration of Soviet Union.
The connect with these Central Asian nations is key to India for a number of reasons: security co-operation in the wake of Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, China’s influence in the strategically vital region, connectivity plans, including the International North South Transit Corridor (INSTC), energy needs (Kazakhstan has Uranium reserves and Turkmenistan is part of the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline), cultural links and trade potential.
The last time a grouping of countries was invited to the R-Day parade in Delhi was in 2018, when 10 leaders from ASEAN were chief guests. Over the past few years, chief guests have included former US President Barack Obama (2015), French former President Francois Hollande (2016) and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (2017), the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
In 2021, British PM Boris Johnson had cancelled his visit to the January 26 parade due to the pandemic.
