Delhi plays host to Muizzu, but India's role in building harbour in naval base in Maldives goes under probe

New Delhi: Even as New Delhi played host to President Mohamed Muizzu of the Maldives during the weekend, a parliamentary panel in the Indian Ocean archipelago on Tuesday launched an inquiry into a 2021 bilateral agreement that allowed India to “develop, support and maintain” a harbour at Uthuru Thila Falhu naval base in the island nation.

The parliamentary panel also launched a probe into two more bilateral agreements India and the Maldives had inked during Muizzu’s predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s term. One of the agreements allowed India to conduct hydrographic surveys in the territorial waters of the Maldives. The other was about India’s gift of an aircraft to the Maldives.

Ahmed Azaan, a member of the parliamentary committee on security services, asked for probes into the three agreements. Azaan, a journalist-turned-politician, was recently elected to the People’s Majlis of the Maldives. He had contested the elections on a ticket from the People’s National Congress, led by Muizzu.

He made the move to review the agreements between New Delhi and Malé even when Muizzu was in New Delhi to attend the ceremony that marked the beginning of the third term of Narendra Modi as the prime minister of India.

The defence cooperation between the two nations had expanded over the past five years. India completed the installation of a coastal radar system, comprising 10 radar stations, in the Maldives to help keep watch in the Indian Ocean.

New Delhi on February 21, 2021, signed an agreement with the Solih Government to “develop, support and maintain” a harbour at Uthuru Thila Falhu naval base in the island nation. Though the new harbour is being built officially for the use of the Maldives National Defence Force Coast Guard, it is also being seen as a strategic asset that could give India an edge over China, which has been trying to spread its tentacles in the Indian Ocean region.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation in the field of hydrography was signed during Modi’s visit to Malé in June 2019.

The presence of Muizzu at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi during Modi’s oath ceremony on Sunday was particularly significant as he had been over the past few months leading the Maldives into the orbit of China’s geo-political influence triggering concerns in India. He had once led an ‘India Out’ campaign in the Maldives and won the presidential elections in September 2023 promising to make India withdraw all its military personnel – deployed for medical evacuations and other humanitarian services – from the Indian Ocean archipelago.

Azaan was also a frontline leader of the ‘India Out’ campaign.