Rajnath Singh to Represent India at SCO Heads of Government Meet in Dushanbe on October 19-20
New Delhi: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will visit Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe to represent India at the 25th meeting of the Council of Heads of Government (CHG) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), scheduled to be held on October 19 and 20.
The Ministry of Defence announced the visit on Sunday, saying the two-day meeting will focus on strengthening multilateral cooperation among SCO member states, particularly in the areas of trade, economy, investment, connectivity, innovation and cultural-humanitarian exchanges.
According to the ministry, the meeting is also expected to review the progress of ongoing cooperation initiatives and consider decisions relating to the organisation's financial and institutional functioning. India remains actively engaged in various SCO mechanisms, the statement said, and continues to contribute to regional cooperation through initiatives in areas such as start-ups and innovation, digital public infrastructure and people-to-people exchanges.
The agenda of the meeting is expected to cover trade and investment cooperation, industrial collaboration, transport and logistics, the development of the creative and digital economy, innovation and financial interaction. Social, cultural and humanitarian cooperation will also figure in the deliberations. The meeting brings together heads of government and designated senior representatives of SCO member states to discuss regional cooperation and economic engagement.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to participate virtually, according to a senior government official quoted in reports earlier in the week. Mr. Modi usually attends the meetings of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO — the bloc's top leadership forum — as he did at the 26th summit held in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, from August 31 to September 1 earlier this year.
During his visit, Mr. Singh is also expected to hold a bilateral meeting with the Tajik leadership. The discussions are expected to provide an opportunity to review bilateral ties between the two countries and explore avenues for further cooperation in defence, security and economic engagement.
India has highlighted the need to expand intra-SCO trade, lower trade costs, strengthen supply chains and improve connectivity. In September, at the 25th meeting of SCO Ministers Responsible for Foreign Economic and Trade Activities — also held in Dushanbe — India presented three pillars of "Security, Connectivity and Opportunity" for international trade, underlining its approach to economic engagement within the grouping.
The SCO is one of the world's largest regional organisations, comprising ten member states — India, China, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Belarus. It also has two observer states, Afghanistan and Mongolia, and fifteen dialogue partners including Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Sri Lanka.
Founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the organisation admitted India and Pakistan as permanent members in 2017.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced earlier this week that Premier Li Qiang would visit Tajikistan from October 18 to 20 at the invitation of Tajik Prime Minister Kokhir Rasulzoda and attend the SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting — setting the stage for a gathering of some of Eurasia's most senior leaders under Tajikistan's chairmanship for the year.
The previous CHG meeting was held in Moscow, Russia, on November 18, 2025, where India was represented by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. The present visit will be Mr. Singh's second to Tajikistan in five years; he had earlier travelled to Dushanbe in July 2021 to attend the annual meeting of the defence ministers of SCO member states, and in April this year he attended the SCO defence ministers' meeting at Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
The meeting comes at a time when Eurasian supply chains, energy flows and regional security remain in sharp global focus. For India, the forum offers a platform to advance its priorities on trade facilitation, digital infrastructure and connectivity corridors linking Central and South Asia, even as geopolitical differences among member states shape the pace of consensus.
Mr. Singh's participation also underscores India's approach of sustained engagement with the SCO across formats — heads of state, heads of government, defence and foreign ministers — a posture New Delhi sees as consistent with its multi-alignment strategy in a multipolar world.
India's relationship with Tajikistan, the host country, carries particular significance in New Delhi's Central Asia outreach. The two countries share long-standing ties in defence and security cooperation, anchored by India's military presence at the Farkhor Air Base in Tajikistan — one of India's few military facilities abroad — and sustained training and capacity-building engagement between the two armed forces.
Tajikistan's location, bordering Afghanistan to the south and China to the east, makes it a key partner in India's assessment of regional security dynamics in the post-2021 Afghanistan landscape, and Dushanbe has been a regular venue for consultations on counter-terrorism and the threat of transnational extremism.
The Council of Heads of Government is the SCO's second-highest decision-making body after the Council of Heads of State, and its meetings are where the organisation's economic agenda is translated into working programmes — joint projects, financing mechanisms and sectoral cooperation.
This year's edition under Tajikistan's chairmanship is expected to give particular attention to transport corridors and logistics, reflecting Central Asia's push to diversify trade routes, as well as to the digital economy, where India has positioned its public digital infrastructure as a model for member states. Indian officials have repeatedly offered to share the country's experience with identity, payments and data-sharing platforms as part of SCO cooperation.
As the Dushanbe meeting opens on October 19, the outcomes will be watched for signals on where the bloc's economic cooperation is headed — and for how India navigates a forum that includes both its strategic partners and its rivals, using multilateral engagement to keep dialogue open across fault lines.
Officials said the meeting will provide an opportunity for India to exchange views with other SCO member states on advancing practical and mutually beneficial cooperation within the organisation, and to press its long-standing call for transparent, rules-based and market-driven economic engagement across the region.
(Reporting based on The Hindu, The Economic Times and the Press Information Bureau.)