Indian Foreign Minister Meets Aliyev and Bayramov in Baku

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Azerbaijan on October 23. He held face-to-face meetings with President Ilham Aliyev and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramov. This is Jaishankar's first visit to Azerbaijan, and also the first visit by India's highest-level delegation in almost ten years.

Relations between Baku and New Delhi have historically been complicated by India's close ties with Armenia, while Azerbaijan has long been an ally of Pakistan, India's main geopolitical rival. Pakistan established diplomatic relations with Armenia only in 2025.

According to reports, in September 2025 India blocked Azerbaijan's accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), while Pakistan obstructed Armenia's accession to the organisation. In May 2025, during the India-Pakistan conflict, India and Armenia found themselves on one side, and Pakistan and Azerbaijan on the other. This confrontation caused tension between India and Azerbaijan.

At a press conference, Jaishankar said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Ilham Aliyev met in Bishkek within the framework of the SCO summit, and that the visit to Baku was a continuation of that meeting. "We exchanged views on various aspects of our relations," he said.

According to Jaishankar, he discussed expanding relations with Bayramov and considered economic cooperation issues, including trade, investment and energy. He noted that Indian companies have been operating in Azerbaijan for many years, and that investment, especially in the oil and energy sectors, is of decisive importance.

"Both countries make an important contribution to the development of the International North-South Transport Corridor. We agreed to cooperate more closely in this direction. We also discussed ways to increase the number of direct flights and further deepen our relations," Jaishankar said. He also stressed the importance of the progress made in the peace process between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

In an official statement issued after the meeting, Aliyev said that, on the instructions of Prime Minister Modi, he highly values Jaishankar's visit and stressed the importance of discussing bilateral relations with India. The Azerbaijani statement emphasised that Azerbaijan and India "are members of the Global South" and "share similar positions on a number of international agenda issues, including topics related to the interests of Global South countries". The sides discussed prospects for cooperation in political, trade-economic, high-technology, cultural, humanitarian and other areas.

Vasif Huseynov, head of AIR Centre, a research centre supported by the Azerbaijani government, wrote that India-Azerbaijan relations have great potential and that there is now the political will to realise it. Suhasini Haidar, diplomatic affairs editor of the Indian media outlet The Hindu, described the meeting as a "significant turning point" in relations and said: "When needed, diplomacy works." According to her, this is particularly noteworthy given that a year earlier the two sides had blocked each other's accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation with retaliatory steps.