CENTRE FOR AIR POWER STUDIES

In November 2023, the coalition of People’s National Congress (PNC) and the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) won the election in Maldives on the backs of a campaign that was largely anti-India. [...] Mohamed Muizzu took over as the 8th President of the Maldives.1 So far, his foreign policy has demonstrated and verified what optics held about his pro-China and anti-India stance.2 To this end, the utter disrespectful and derogatory remarks by the three deputy ministers from the Muizzu’s government against the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while the latter was in Lakshadweep sent signals o. [...] The same request by India went unnoticed by Muizzu’s government in Maldives, and a green signal has been given to the Chinese research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 3.8 Last but not least, setting March 15, 2024, as the deadline for the withdrawal of the Indian troops from Maldives, who have been operating the two Dhruva helicopters and a Dornier aircraft, has added strains in the 2 CAPS InFocus 19 Janua. [...] The world witnessed the ease with which the gigantic infrastructure projects such as the airports and seaports were accepted with open arms by 3 CAPS InFocus 19 January 2024 the Sri Lankans and how they fell like a deck of cards out of the control of the Lankans themselves. [...] By embracing China and giving more grounds to Beijing, Maldives is inviting greater instability in the IOR in a second-handed way due to the geopolitical, geostrategic, and geoeconomic significance of the Indian Ocean, many distant and proximate powers today are involved in this part of the larger Indo-Pacific region.