PM Modi To Host Virtual SCO Summit Tomorrow; Putin And Jinping Among Top Leaders Likely To Attend The Meeting

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host the virtual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on Tuesday (4 June), with expected attendance from Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, among others.

The summit is set to commence at 12.30 pm on Tuesday and conclude around 3 pm.

Originally planned to be held in-person in New Delhi, the summit's plan was changed in early June.

The SCO Foreign ministers' meeting took place in-person in Goa, with attendance from Pakistan's Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, China's Qin Gang, and Russia's Sergey Lavrov, among others.

The previous in-person SCO summit occurred in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in September last year. India's association with the SCO began in 2005 as an Observer country and became a full Member State at the Astana Summit in 2017.

According to an official cited by The Indian Express, India has played a "very active and constructive role" in all spheres of activities within the SCO over the past six years.

At the Samarkand Summit in September 2022, India assumed the presidency of the SCO for the first time, taking over from Uzbekistan.