Muizzu sets March 15 deadline for India to withdraw troops from Maldives amid diplomatic row

New Delhi: President Mohamed Muizzu’s government in Malé on Sunday set March 15 as the deadline for India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives as the tension between New Delhi and the Indian Ocean archipelago escalated over the past few days.

New Delhi refrained from commenting on the deadline set for the withdrawal of India’s military personnel from the Maldives but confirmed that it was in discussion with Malé on the issue.

Abdullah Nazim Ibrahim, the public policy secretary at the office of the President of the Maldives, announced the March 15 deadline during a press conference in Malé, even as the officials of the island nation’s government were having a meeting with the diplomats of India.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of the Maldives later stated in a press release that both sides had “agreed to fast track the withdrawal” of India’s military personnel from the island nation, apart from discussing and expressing willingness to intensify development cooperation. The press release however had no reference to the March 15 deadline.

Though the Muizzu Government had initially stated that India had 77 military personnel in the Maldives, Ibrahim on Sunday updated the count to 88. Most of them were deployed to operate and fly two Dornier aircraft and a helicopter gifted by India to the Maldives for emergency evacuation of people from the islands.

New Delhi confirmed that the first meeting of the India-Maldives High-Level Core Group had been held in Malé on Sunday.

“Both sides also held discussions on finding mutually workable solutions to enable continued operation of Indian aviation platforms that provide humanitarian and medevac (medical evacuation) services to the people of Maldives,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi stated, without making any comment on the deadline set by the Muizzu Government.

The MEA in New Delhi stated that both sides had during the meeting held discussions on wide-ranging issues related to bilateral cooperation towards identifying steps to enhance the partnership, including expediting the implementation of ongoing development cooperation projects. “It was agreed to hold the next meeting of the High-Level Core Group in India on a mutually convenient date,” it added.

“Indian military personnel cannot stay in the Maldives,” said Ibrahim, stressing that it was the policy of Muizzu Government. He said that setting the March 15 deadline for India to withdraw all its military personnel from the Maldives was on the agenda of the meeting of the high-level core group that the two governments had set up to discuss the issue.

The meeting started in the morning and was still on when the public policy secretary at the office of the Maldivian President announced the deadline.

New Delhi’s envoy to Malé, Munu Mahawar, was leading the delegation of the officials of India in the meeting with the bureaucrats of the Government of the Maldives.

Malé moved to announce the March 15 as the deadline a day after Muizzu returned from Beijing after a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who sent out a subtle message to New Delhi, by not only pledging his nation’s ‘firm’ support to the sovereignty of the Maldives but also asserting its ‘resolute’ opposition to “interference by external forces in the internal affairs” of the archipelago.

Muizzu’s campaign for the presidential polls in September 2023 saw him opposing and promising to reverse his predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s ‘India First’ policy of treating India as a preferred partner for the Maldives and lessening its reliance on China. He had vowed to make India withdraw all military personnel from the Maldives immediately after taking oath.

When union minister Kiren Rijiju called on him after attending his swearing-in ceremony in Malé on November 17 as a representative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Muizzu used the occasion to formally request India to withdraw the military personnel from the Maldives.

The Muizzu Government also moved to make India stop hydrographic surveys in the territorial waters of the Maldives.

The Muizzu Government moved to set the deadline for India to withdraw all its military personnel from the Maldives amid a row on X between the social media users of the two neighbouring nations. The row started after some politicians and government officials of the Maldives reacted on X to pictures and videos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Union Territory of Lakshadweep off the Malabar Coast of India.

One of Muizzu’s deputy ministers even called the prime minister of India a ‘clown’ and a ‘puppet of Israel’ on X. The post was deleted after it triggered a volley of sharp responses from the X users in India. Some other lawmakers and government officials of the Maldives made critical comments about the holiday destinations of India.

To contain the row, Muizzu suspended three of his deputy ministers for making derogatory comments about Modi. This was however not enough to calm down India’s celebrities, travel agencies and social media users who continued the tirade against the Maldives, some even calling for boycotting the archipelago as a holiday destination.

The government of the People’s Party of Maldives (PPM) led by Abdullah Yameen Abdul Gayoom as the president had between 2013 and 2018 had put the Maldives into a debt trap by awarding the state-owned companies of China lucrative contracts to build several infrastructure projects – mostly on unsustainable loan terms – ignoring the security interests of India. Beijing’s influence over Abdullah Yameen's regime had resulted in strains in New Delhi’s relations with Malé. It had seen a reset after Solih and Yameen’s predecessor, Mohamed Nasheed, had led the Maldivian Democratic Party to return to power in November 2018.

Yameen and his party, PPM, however, launched an ‘India Out’ campaign to oppose Solih’s ‘India First’ policy. Muizzu was one of the frontline leaders of the ‘India Out’ campaign, which finally set the narrative of his campaign for the presidential elections last year