PM Narendra Modi back at work, engages Maldives Prez Muizzu at President's banquet

Elected for the third time, PM Narendra Modi was back at work and was seen engaging Maldivian President at the RB banquet for visiting dignitaries.

Updated on: Jun 10, 2024, 09:11:27 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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New Delhi: As soon as the swearing-in ceremony was over and Modi 3.0 had begun, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was back on the job and had a detailed conversation with Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu at the dinner table during Rashtrapati Bhawan banquet late on Sunday evening.

PM Narendra Modi with world leaders who attended his swearing-in ceremony in Delhi.

It is learnt that President Muizzu was seated next to PM Modi as the Indian PM was seen having a serious conversation with the Maldivian head of state. Muizzu visited India seven months after taking over as President on November 17, which is seen as an unusually long time for a Maldivian President. Muizzu ran his election campaign on the "Out India” slogan but the matters got complicated as his junior ministers started making controversial statements on India.

While Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe is expected to depart for Colombo by noon, other leaders will hold meetings with the External Affairs Minister (still to be announced) and later call on President Draupadi Murmu. President Muizzu and other visiting dignitaries like Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Nepal Prime Minister Prachanda, Bhutan Tshering Tobgay, Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth and Seychelles Vice President Ahmed Affif will also be holding meetings with External Affairs Minister calling on them and then all the dignitaries meeting the Indian President.

Also read: Narendra Modi's first message to 'Global South' after oath: ‘India will amplify...’

While all these leaders were personally invited by PM Modi for his third term, the common factor facing all of them is the rise of Communist China on the northern borders and in the Indian Ocean Region. The rapidly expanding Chinese Navy and its increasing forays into the Indian Ocean will create friction in future with no less than two surveillance cum spy ships still in the IOR.

Also read: Narendra Modi Cabinet 3.0: 5 NDA allies, JP Nadda inducted, Smriti Irani & Anurag Thakur out. Key takeaways

That the Chinese chose to warn India after PM Modi merely accepted the greetings on his re-election from Taiwan President shows how prickly the Xi Jinping regime has become. Chinese propaganda media also tried to drive a wedge between India and US ties by saying that the Biden administration should reconsider its bilateral relations with Delhi as PM Modi’s party had not achieved simple majority seats in 2024 polls.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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