NEW DELHI:

Pakistan

has invited

PM Modi

along with other

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

(SCO) leaders for the council of heads of govt (CHG) in-person meeting it will host in October. While there is no question of Modi travelling to Islamabad, it will be interesting to see if he deputes a minister to represent India at the event, as he has done in the past, given the troubled relationship with Pakistan.

Pakistan will host the meeting on October 15-16 as it holds the rotating chairmanship of CHG, the second highest decision-making body in the Eurasian group after the Council of Heads of State. Modi has been a regular at the heads of state summit, although he skipped it in Kazakhstan this year. In CHG, the practice has been to nominate a minister to represent India. Foreign minister S Jaishankar participated last year in Bishkek.
Indian govt is yet to take a decision on Pakistan’s invite to PM Modi for the

SCO CHG

meeting. The recent

terror attacks

in

Jammu

will likely act as a deterrent against any high-profile minister-level visit to Pakistan.
In his Kargil Vijay Diwas message last month, Modi had named Pakistan to say it had not learnt anything from history and was trying to remain relevant through terrorism and proxy war. The last Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj in 2015.

Despite Modi’s rapport with his counterpart Shehbaz Sharif’s brother Nawaz, chances of a rapprochement in

India-Pakistan relations

remain slim. While Pakistan wants India to reverse the decision to nullify J&K’s special status, India maintains that there’s nothing left to discuss with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue except its illegal occupation of POK.
India also remains wary of Chinese dominance in SCO and efforts to position the group as an anti-West platform.

Significantly, SCO is perhaps the only multilateral forum where India and Pakistan have managed to work together, despite the hostilities that have plagued the relationship. Modi had skipped the heads of state summit in Kazakhstan apparently because it clashed with the Parliament session in early July.
It’s not clear yet if the leaders will be allowed to address the SCO event virtually. Both India and Pakistan are full members of the Russia and China-led group which New Delhi sees as crucial for regional security and cooperation with central Asian countries.