Ahead of March 10 deadline: Civilians’ team reaches Maldives to take over ops from military personnel

The Indian military personnel stationed in Addu will leave by March 10 as agreed by the two governments, the statement said.

The statement also said a replacement helicopter will also arrive from India by Wednesday and the civilian team will begin training exercises to take over its operations.

On February 2, the two countries had decided that India will withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives between March and May.

MEA’s official spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had said on February 8 that “the present personnel would be replaced by competent Indian technical personnel”.

They will continue to operate the two helicopters and a Dornier aircraft in the island nation.

This was the key takeaway from the second meeting of the high-level core group between Indian and Maldivian officials in New Delhi on February 2.

The Maldives Foreign Ministry statement had said at that time that “both sides agreed that the Government of India will replace the military personnel in one of the three aviation platforms by 10 March 2024, and will complete replacing military personnel in the other two platforms by 10 May 2024”.

The Ministry of External Affairs did not spell out any timeline in its statement, but had said that both sides “agreed on a set of mutually workable solutions to enable continued operation of Indian aviation platforms” that provide humanitarian and medical evacuation services to the people of Maldives.

Around 80 Indian military personnel are stationed in Maldives to operate these platforms. On January 14, after the first meeting of the core group, the Maldives government had set a March 15 deadline for India to withdraw its military personnel from the country.

Sources said the two sides worked to enable continued operation of these three platforms which are the lifeline of Maldives medical emergency services.

This withdrawal of Indian military personnel is being seen as Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu able to have his way on the ‘India Out’ plank on which he rode to power last year.

The two sides had decided to set up the core group following a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Muizzu on the sidelines of the COP28 summit in Dubai in December.

Soon after taking oath as the President in November, Muizzu, widely seen as a pro-China leader, had formally requested India to withdraw its military personnel from his country, saying the Maldivian people had given him a “strong mandate” to make this request to New Delhi.

Muizzu won the presidential election, ousting Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, after promising to remove Indian military presence from the Maldives.