A day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met his Maldivian counterpart Moosa Zameer, India completed the withdrawal of all its soldiers from Maldives, just ahead of the May 10 deadline set by President Mohamed Muizzu.
The last batch of Indian soldiers stationed in the Maldives have been repatriated, confirmed Heena Waleed, news agency PTI quoted the President’s Office Chief Spokesperson as saying to Sun.mv news portal.
Repatriation of about 89 Indian military personnel stationed in the Maldives — to operate and maintain two helicopters and Dornier aircraft that India had gifted earlier — was a key pledge of Muizzu during his presidential campaign in 2023.
Waleed shared that the details about the number of soldiers stationed would be disclosed later. Earlier, its government had announced that 51 of these soldiers were repatriated to India on Monday. Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, at a media briefing in New Delhi on Thursday, confirmed that the first and second batches of the Indian personnel had returned and were replaced by “competent Indian technical personnel”.
Riding to power last November on an ‘India Out’ poll plank, one of Muizzu’s first acts was to demand the withdrawal of around 80 Indian military personnel by May 10 — they had been stationed there to operate two helicopters and a Dornier aircraft.
On Thursday, in a veiled reference to the pro-China tilt of the Maldives government, Jaishankar had told Zameer that the development of India-Maldives ties was based on “mutual interests” and “reciprocal sensitivity” given that they are “close and proximate neighbours”.
India had recently approved the highest-ever export quotas for essential commodities — eggs, potatoes, onions, sugar, rice, wheat flour and pulses, river sand and stone aggregates — to the Maldives for 2024-25 under a unique bilateral mechanism. The approved quantities are the highest since this arrangement came into effect in 1981.
