Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu is likely to travel to India on an official visit next week, The Indian Express has learnt. He is expected to come to Delhi mid-week, sources said. This comes days after New Delhi and Male held a defence dialogue in New Delhi last week, where they discussed “ongoing defence cooperation projects” and “forthcoming bilateral military exercises”. “The President is scheduled to visit India very soon. As you are aware, such trips are scheduled for a time of maximum convenience to leaders of the two countries. Discussions regarding this are in progress,” Heena Waleed, chief spokesperson at the President’s Office, said in Male. This will be a standalone bilateral visit, three months after Muizzu travelled to India for the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 9. The defence dialogue last week was the first since India withdrew its uniformed military personnel from the Maldives earlier this year. The last one was in Male in March last year, when then President Ibrahim Solih was in office, months before Muizzu took over. India and the Maldives witnessed a slide in bilateral ties after Muizzu won the elections on his 'India Out' poll plank last November. Seen as pro-China, Muizzu asked India to withdraw its military personnel soon after assuming office. Last December, the Muizzu government also decided not to renew a 2019 MoU with India for hydrographic surveying. In February, India agreed to pull out 80-odd military personnel stationed in the Maldives between March 10 and May 10. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said two helicopters and a Dornier aircraft in the Maldives would be operated by “competent Indian technical personnel” who would replace the “present personnel”. After the replacement of personnel was completed, Maldives Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer visited India in May. A month later, Muizzu attended Modi's swearing-in ceremony. And in August, in the first high-level visit to the Maldives since Muizzu was elected, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar went to Male to discuss all areas of bilateral cooperation to deepen the partnership. Jaishankar framed the Maldives as “one of the cornerstones of our 'Neighborhood First' policy. of our Vision SAGAR, as well as of our commitment to the Global South”. “To put it succinctly in the words of my Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for India, neighbourhood is a priority and, in the neighbourhood, the Maldives is a priority. We also share the closest bonds of history and kinship,” he said.
