Modi goes to Tashkent, then Bishkek for the SCO’s 25th year
The prime minister will hold talks with Shavkat Mirziyoyev on 29–30 August and address the 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on 1 September. A meeting with Vladimir Putin is listed on the sidelines. India will put Security, Connectivity and Opportunity on the table.
New Delhi3 min read
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fly to Tashkent on 29 August for a two-day state visit and then to Bishkek for the 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on 31 August and 1 September, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday. Secretary (West) Sibi George briefed reporters on the programme. A meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled on the sidelines in the Kyrgyz capital.
The Uzbekistan leg is at the invitation of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. It will be Modi’s fourth visit to the country and his second bilateral trip there. Delegation-level talks are listed on trade and investment, critical minerals, healthcare, education, space, technology and people-to-people ties. The prime minister is expected to visit the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial in Tashkent, where the former Indian prime minister died in 1966, and the Mahatma Gandhi Centre at Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies.
From Tashkent he goes to Bishkek at the invitation of President Sadyr Japarov. George said the leaders’ programme includes a welcome dinner on 31 August and a plenary on 1 September, where Modi will speak. He will also attend the opening of the 6th World Nomad Games, a Central Asian sporting festival hosted this year around the summit.
What India will say in the hall
The SCO marks 25 years since it was founded. India has been a full member since 2017 after observer status from 2005. George repeated the original mandate: counter terrorism, separatism and extremism. Modi’s talking points, already used at the Tianjin meeting, are Security, Connectivity and Opportunity. This year’s official theme is “25 Years of the SCO: Together Towards Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity.”
The Bishkek calendar sits two weeks before the BRICS summit in New Delhi. Putin will be in both cities if he takes both invitations. Xi Jinping’s travel plan for September is unconfirmed. The Doval-Wang Yi eight-point border note of 26 August is the most recent India-China paper those leaders would have if they meet.
A Modi-Putin session in Bishkek would cover defence supplies, oil payments and the wider war, including the Hormuz shipping problem that has already cut product flows. India has kept discounted Russian crude while facing tariff and political pressure from Washington. That tension does not disappear in a Central Asian banquet hall. It is the reason the bilateral is on the list.
Why Tashkent is more than a stopover
Uzbekistan is a source of critical minerals and a node on any north-south route that avoids Pakistan. India has spent several years trying to make Chabahar and the International North-South Transport Corridor do real cargo work. Talks on minerals, education and space are the softer items. The harder item is whether Tashkent will sign anything that moves ore or components on a timetable.
Shastri’s memorial is a fixed point on Indian visits. Gandhi’s centre at the Oriental Studies university is newer public diplomacy. Neither substitutes for a minerals memorandum or a connectivity protocol. George said engagements with Uzbekistan have been “extensive and fruitful.” The 29-30 August talks will show whether that phrase produces a document.
Modi leaves four days after the briefing. The sequence is Tashkent, Bishkek, then home, then BRICS. The useful test is not the number of speeches. It is whether the Putin meeting is confirmed on camera, whether a minerals paper appears in Tashkent, and whether the SCO declaration says anything specific about terrorism lists and transit that India can use later in New Delhi.
