24th India ASEAN Meeting

Table of Contents

India ASEAN meeting UPSC: Relevance

GS 2: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

Recently, India has hosted the 24^th India ASEAN meeting in New Delhi to mark two major anniversaries — the 30th anniversary of India’s dialogue relations and the 10th anniversary of Strategic Partnership with ASEAN.

The two day Special ASEAN-India Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (SAIFMM) will be attended by all Foreign Ministers of other ASEAN Member States.
2022 has been designated as the ASEAN-India friendship year.
This is the first time SAIFMM will host in New Delhi the ASEAN-India FMM meeting. Also the 24^thASEAN-India Senior Officials meeting took place in New Delhi.
Also, the 12^thedition of Delhi Dialogue (DD) was followed the SAIFMM in New Delhi.
Theme of Delhi Dialogue: Building Bridges in the Indo-Pacific

Delhi Dialogue is a Track 1.5 dialogue between India and ASEAN.
Delhi Dialogue brings together practitioners, corporate leaders, opinion makers, academics and journalists, every year, to discuss a wide range of issues of common interest and concern in India – ASEAN relationship.

In 1992, a sectoral partnership was established, which eventually transformed into full dialogue partnership in December 1995.
The relation reached Summit Level Partnership in 2002 and in 2012 Strategic partnership.
In 2020, Plan of Action 2021-2025 was adopted, which forms the foundation of the ongoing India-ASEAN collaboration.

The focus of the meeting was to review the progress of cooperation under all three pillars of Partnership –economic and socio-cultural, political-security.
The meeting was also aimed at taking steps for further implementation of ASEAN-India Plan of Action (2021-2025).
Moreover, emphasis was also put for the implementation of ASEAN-India Joint Statement on Cooperation on ASEAN Outlook on Indo-Pacific (AOIP).

Myanmar was not a part of the 24^thASEAN-India Ministerial meeting that was held in New Delhi.
Reasons: International pressure to avoid inclusion of Myanmar in the high-level meetings, and souring of ASEAN-Myanmar ties after military coup that overthrew democratic government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The non-participation of Myanmar is being interpreted as India accommodating international concern over the junta in Myanmar which has refused to enter into a negotiation with the protesters demanding restoration of democracy.
Earlier, Myanmar had participated in the BIMSTEC summit in a virtual format that had drawn criticism from the United States.