All five Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, are being invited by New Delhi as the Republic Day guest. This is the first time that all Central Asian countries will be present as the guest and the second time so many countries will be invited together after ASEAN as a grouping was invited for Republic day in 2018.
The formal conversation regarding this issue starts 2-3 weeks ago between the two sides, multiple sources have confirm.
This is a significant outreach to Central Asia by New Delhi, with which it shares cultural, civilizational, and historic linkages.
PM Modi had visit all Central Asian countries in 2015, a first by any Indian Prime Minister since the five republics came into being since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The visit by Central Asian leadership marks the first summit of Central Asia and India dialogue, a mechanism that already exists at the foreign minister’s level.
On 18th-19th December 2021, New Delhi will be hosting the Central Asian, India foreign ministers meet.
This will be the third such meeting of Central Asian and Indian foreign ministers.
The first such meet happen in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand in January 2019 which saw India being represent by the then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
In 2020, the meet happen virtually.
India has in the past announce a US $ 1 billion Line of Credit for priority development projects in fields such as connectivity, energy, IT, healthcare, education, agriculture, etc.
As it has also pitch for Chabahar port in Iran for an easy route for connectivity, something that has garner support among those countries.
Afghanistan has been one of the main topics of conversation between the two sides, with EAM visiting Uzbekistan and Tajikistan earlier this year where the issue dominate.
India’s choice of guests at the republic day shows its closeness with the country or a region.
Under PM Narendra Modi’s tenure, starting from 2014, India has invite US President Barack Obama (2015), French President Francois Hollande(2016), UAE’s Md Bin Zayed Al Nahyan (2017), all the 10 ASEAN countries (2018), South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa (2019) and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro (2020).
In 2020, UK’s Boris Johnson was expect as the guest but that could not happen due to covid crisis.
Only Kazakhstan has been the chief guest of India’s grand parade in the year 2009.
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