India is expected to get into an agreement with Iran on Monday (May 13) to manage its Chabahar Port for the next 10 years. The Iranian port is seen as India’s key connectivity link to Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the broader Eurasian expanse.
A report by The Economic Times quoted sources saying India’s shipping minister Sarbananda Sonowal will be travelling to Iran on Monday to sign the deal to manage Chabahar Port for the next decade which will be extendable automatically.
How the new agreement will be different?
The new agreement which will be valid for 10 years is intended to replace the original contract inked in 2016 which only covered operations at the Shahid Beheshti terminal of Chabahar Port and has been renewed on a yearly basis.
India which has financed the expansion of Chabahar Port will be able to run it once the deal is agreed upon with Iran.
Why is it important?
The trip of India’s minister to Iran and a possible signing of the agreement hold a special significance as they come amid the high-octane Lok Sabha 2024 polls.
It is crucial as it marks the first instance of India taking over the management of an overseas port.
The signing of the agreement comes at a time when the crisis in the West Asia crisis has affected key trade routes.
How will it help India?
The pact will enable India to operate the port, the expansion of which it has financed.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), April, approved a proposal by India Ports Global to assume operations at Myanmar’s Sittwe Port in the Bay of Bengal.
The report cited experts saying Sonowal’s visit amid the crucial poll campaign highlights the importance of the agreement, which has been in the works for several years.
There are plans to integrate Chabahar with the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) which will help facilitate India’s access to Afghanistan and Central Asia without any dependency on Pakistan.
For the unversed, Pakistan does not allow India land access for trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia.
INSTC is a 7,200-km-long multi-mode transport project for moving freight among India, Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia and Europe. It is India’s vision to economise the movement of cargo between India and Central Asia, and the Chabahar Port would act as a commercial transit centre for the region.
Why is Chabahar Port crucial?
Chabahar Port is said to have a strategic importance for both Iran and India and it is believed that it can potentially help Iran ward off the effect of Western sanctions as well as offer India an alternative route that bypasses Pakistan
India has been persistently pushing for the Chabahar Port project to boost regional trade, especially for its connectivity to Afghanistan.
Chabahar Port serves as a counterbalance to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The port was also extensively discussed during the talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi at the BRICS summit in South Africa in August and later in November last year when they spoke on the Gaza crisis.
During his visit to Iran in 2016, PM Modi also signed a pact on Chahbahar. It was a tripartite agreement with Iran and Afghanistan to develop the Shahid Beheshti terminal.
Later in 2018, when the then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited India, the issue of expanding India’s role surfaced prominently.
The issue was once again a matter of discussion when India’s External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar was in Tehran in January this year.
Significance of Chabahar Port
Chabahar Port is Iran’s first deepwater port and is positioned at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman. Located in Sistan-Balochistan province, it lies to the west of Iran’s border with Pakistan, about as far as Gwadar, a competing port developed by China in Pakistan which is situated to the east of the border.
India’s involvement in Chabahar Port
It all began in 2002, when Hassan Rouhani, who was serving as the National Security Advisor to then President Syed Mohammad Khatami, held a discussion with his Indian counterpart, Brajesh Mishra.
The next year, Khatami visited India and signed a roadmap of a strategic partnership with the then-Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
One of the key projects of the strategic partnership was Chabahar.
However, after the 2003 Vajpayee-Khatami agreement, there was little follow-up action as India drew closer to the administration of President George W Bush. The US had put Iran in the so-called “axis of evil” along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea which put pressure on New Delhi to restrict its relationship with Tehran.
The sanctions on Iran by the US slowed down the port’s development.
The Chabahar project became all the more important for India after China began to develop the Gwadar port in Pakistan as part of BRI.
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