Why India has sent a senior diplomat to Pak for the first time since Op Sindoor
India has sent a delegation led by senior diplomat Alok Amitabh Dimri to a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Islamabad. He is the most senior Indian official to visit Pakistan since the Pahalgam terror attack and the military confrontation in May 2025.
Dimri, an Additional Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs and India’s SCO National Coordinator, is attending the Council of National Coordinators meeting from September 28 to 30.
It is the first such meeting under Pakistan’s 2026–27 chairmanship of the SCO Council of Heads of State.
Sources told India Today that the visit is confined to the SCO programme. No bilateral meeting with Pakistani officials is planned.
“Bilateral talks need a terrorism-free, conducive environment. But we will engage with Pakistan under the format of SCO,” a source said.
India and Pakistan have both been full SCO members since 2017. New Delhi has continued to attend meetings hosted by Pakistan despite strained bilateral ties. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visited Islamabad in October 2024 for a meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of Government.
Dimri’s visit comes more than 16 months after India launched Operation Sindoor in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.
India has maintained that talks and terrorism cannot go together. Attending the SCO meeting does not change that position, the sources said.
National coordinators prepare the organisation’s work across member states. The Islamabad meeting is discussing Pakistan’s plans for its chairmanship and preparations for upcoming SCO meetings.
India can also use the forum to put its positions on counter-terrorism and regional connectivity before other members.
Pakistan is due to host the SCO Heads of State summit in Islamabad in 2027 and is expected to invite leaders of all member countries, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India’s level of representation will be decided closer to the summit, the sources said.- Ends
Born in Pauri district of Uttarakhand, Manjeet Negi did his early schooling from his village school near Rishikesh and then moved to the town for secondary education. Later, he did his graduation from Hemavati Nandan Bahuguna University. In the year 2000, he did his journalism diploma from Kurukshetra University and started his career with Doordarshan News and started reporting on defence forces from the 2001 Bhuj earthquake. In his career as a defence correspondent, Negi has had the opportunity to report exclusives from world's highest battlefield Siachen Glacier in the north to the Andamans in the South and from the Rann of Kutch in the west to the Arunachal Pradesh border with China in the East.
A regular news-breaker on matters of national security and military affairs, Negi considers the coverage of he Kedarnath tragedy of 2013 as the highest point of his career. During the grave disaster at Kedarnath in June 2013, Manjeet Negi was the first and only TV reporter who walked for 55 Kms on the hilly track to reach the Kedarnath shrine. Spending his first night in the complex amidst several hundred dead bodies around him, Negi says he saw Lord Kedar in his dream. After the Kedarnath disaster, the writer got another opportunity to cover another disaster in the Nepal earthquake in 2015 for the Aaj Tak channel. During the reporting of that disaster for about 10 days, the writer got an opportunity to witness and report the large scale relief and rescue operations undertaken by the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force.
Besides reporting, he is also a skilled mountaineer. With Nehru Institute of Mountaineering and Garhwal Regiment, he has undertaken mountaineering expedition to Satopanth via Gomukh. Accompanying the Mount Manaslu mountaineering expedition of a Garhwal Regiment unit, he also reported about the expedition. He has also scaled the Dronagiri mountain near Joshimath in Uttarakhand. Manjeet Negi has also been honoured with a special award by the Union Home Minister, Shri Rajnath Singh for his reporting of Kedarnath disaster. He was awarded the best reporter award for his coverage of Nepal earthquake by India Today Group. At present, the writer has been working as Editor with Aajtak Channel of India Today Group.
