Is Maldives' 'India Out' campaign becoming a reality?

The Maldives has decided to pull out of a previous agreement with India on a hydrographic survey of the island nation’s waters. The development comes just a month after the new government led by President Mohamed Muizzu asked India to withdraw its military troops from the Maldives.

According to Indian Express, this is the first bilateral pact that the Muizzu government, which came to power in November, is officially exiting. Widely seen as pro-China, the newly-elected government had earlier said it would assess some of the agreements signed under Muizzu’s predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.

Let’s take a look at how Maldives is moving away from India under President Mohamed Muizzu.

Maldives withdraws from key deal

The Maldives has decided not to renew the hydrography cooperation agreement with India after its expiry on 7 June 2024, reported the newspaper Deccan Herald (DH).

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The pact was signed on 8 June 2019 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Male at the invitation of then President Solih. The agreement allowed India to carry out hydrographic surveys in the territorial waters of the Maldives, mapping underwater surfaces and studying reefs, lagoons, coastlines and other physical features.

The Indian Navy had conducted three such surveys so far, according to Times of India (TOI).

Mohamed Firuzul Abdul Khaleel, Undersecretary for Public Policy at the Maldives President’s Office, said in a press conference on Thursday (14 December) that the Muizzu government has decided against renewing the bilateral hydrography cooperation agreement with India.

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“According to the terms of this agreement, if one party wishes to drop the agreement, the other party must be informed of the decision six months before the agreement is set to expire. According to the terms, the agreement automatically renews for an additional five years, otherwise,” Indian Express quoted him as saying.

Firuzul said the Maldives government has conveyed its decision to India.

As per a report in the Maldives news outlet The Sun, Muizzu consulted his Cabinet before taking a call on the issue.

Firuzul said the administration believed it is “best for national security to improve the Maldivian military’s capacity to conduct such surveys, and protect such sensitive information”, The Sun reported. “In the future, hydrography works will be carried out under 100 per cent Maldivian management, and with only Maldivians privy to the information,” he added.

The senior government official said the Maldives government will review “secret agreements” signed by the previous administration that threaten the independence and sovereignty of the island nation, reported TOI.

Maldives asks India to remove troops

President Muizzu said earlier in December that India has agreed to withdraw its soldiers from the Maldives. Sources in New Delhi told Indian Express that the issue came up briefly in Dubai when Muizzu met PM Modi on the sidelines of the COP28 summit.

India has deployed 77 military personnel in the Maldives, who are reportedly involved in operating and maintaining a Dornier aircraft and two helicopters gifted by New Delhi to the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) for emergency medical evacuations and disaster relief missions.

According to Indian Express, discussions on how to keep these Indian assets operational were “ongoing” and “the core group” that both countries had agreed to form would “look at details of how to take this forward”.

Muizzu, who won the Maldives presidential election in September, told BBC the next month that he had met the Indian ambassador a few days after his victory and “told him very clearly that every single Indian military personnel here should be removed”.

Is it ‘India Out’ under Mohamed Muizzu?

Mohamed Muizzu’s alliance came to power on an ‘India Out’ poll campaign. He was a candidate of the Progressive Congress, a coalition between his party People’s National Congress (PNC) and the jailed former president Abdulla Yameen’s People’s Party of Maldives (PPM).

Yameen, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for corruption, had led the ‘India Out’ campaign and played a key role in drawing the Maldives closer to China.

During the campaign, Muizzu had vowed to change the Maldives’s ‘India First’ policy adopted under his predecessor Solih and remove Indian military personnel from the island nation.

Unlike past Maldivian presidents who came to India first after assuming office, Muizzu went to Turkey as his first foreign destination. Recently, the Maldives did not participate in a meeting of the NSA-level Colombo Security Conclave in which it is a member-state, along with India, Sri Lanka and Mauritius. However, playing down the incident, sources in Male told TOI it was an “administrative issue” and the island nation is still a part of the Conclave.

Meanwhile, Muizzu has denied being a “pro-China” leader. However, sources told DH that his government’s moves to curtail cooperation in hydrography with India and ask New Delhi to remove its troops were intended to “placate” China. India conducting hydrographic surveys in the Maldives vexed Beijing, which has been trying to widen its influence in the Indian Ocean region, the newspaper noted.

With inputs from agencies