India invites Bangladesh PM Tarique Rahman to attend BRICS Summit as part of BIMSTEC outreach
India extended an invitation to Bangladesh's Prime Minister to attend the BRICS leaders' summit scheduled for September 2026 in New Delhi, with Bangladesh attending as a special guest in its capacity as the current BIMSTEC chair
The gesture signals a stabilising trajectory in India-Bangladesh relations, which had deteriorated following the change of government in Bangladesh in August 2024
The invitation also revives India's practice of using its BRICS presidency to engage BIMSTEC members, last exercised at the 2016 Goa summit
The outreach comes as India and Bangladesh separately navigate unresolved bilateral issues, including migration-related concerns and the pending renewal of the Ganges Water Treaty, due to expire in December 2026
BRICS as a Grouping and India's 2026 Presidency
BRICS is an intergovernmental grouping of major emerging economies, originally comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. It coordinates positions on global economic governance, financial architecture, and South-South cooperation, and operates the New Development Bank (NDB) as its principal financial institution.
Key Details
- A 2023 Johannesburg summit decision expanded membership effective January 2024 to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE; Indonesia joined as a full member from January 2025, taking total membership into double digits for the 2026 cycle
- The New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai, began operations in 2014-15 with founding members pooling $100 billion in authorised capital; its membership has since also expanded to include countries such as Bangladesh, the UAE, and Egypt
- India holds the BRICS chairmanship for 2026, succeeding Brazil (2025), and is hosting the summit in New Delhi in September 2026 — the first summit of the expanded grouping to be held in India since the 2021 (virtual) and 2012 New Delhi summits
India's chairmanship year gives it the discretion to invite non-member "special guest" states, a diplomatic tool it is using to simultaneously advance BIMSTEC visibility and bilateral repair with Bangladesh.
BIMSTEC and India's "Neighbourhood First" / "Act East" Convergence
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional grouping established through the 1997 Bangkok Declaration, linking South Asian and Southeast Asian littoral states of the Bay of Bengal. It is often described as a bridge between India's Neighbourhood First and Act East policies, and as a forum that sidesteps SAARC's paralysis caused by India-Pakistan tensions, since Pakistan is not a BIMSTEC member.
Key Details
- Members: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand (seven states)
- The BIMSTEC Secretariat has been headquartered in Dhaka since 2014; India funds roughly a third of the Secretariat's costs
- India is the lead/focal country for BIMSTEC's Transport & Communication, Tourism, Environment & Disaster Management, and Counter-Terrorism & Transnational Crime sectors
- Bangladesh assumed the BIMSTEC chairmanship in April 2025
Bangladesh's current BIMSTEC chairmanship is the institutional basis for its special-guest invitation to the BRICS summit, echoing the format India used in 2016 when it invited BIMSTEC leaders alongside the BRICS summit in Goa to promote India-led regional connectivity.
The 2016 BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit (Goa) as Precedent
At the 2016 BRICS summit hosted by India in Goa, India for the first time paired the BRICS leaders' meeting with a BIMSTEC Outreach Summit, inviting BIMSTEC heads of state/government to a joint session. The format was intended to project India's regional connectivity agenda onto a larger multilateral stage and to signal complementarity between global (BRICS) and regional (BIMSTEC) groupings.
Key Details
- The Goa summit was the 8th BRICS Summit, held in October 2016
- It combined the BRICS leaders' retreat with a BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit on connectivity, counter-terrorism, and economic cooperation
- No comparable joint outreach format was repeated in subsequent India-chaired forums until the 2026 New Delhi summit
The 2026 invitation to Bangladesh, framed explicitly around BIMSTEC outreach, is being read as a revival of the Goa-era template for using India's BRICS chairmanship to advance regional (BIMSTEC) diplomacy alongside global (BRICS) engagement.
- BRICS Summit 2026: New Delhi, scheduled for September 2026, under India's 2026 chairmanship
- BIMSTEC: established 6 June 1997 (Bangkok Declaration); seven members; Secretariat in Dhaka since 2014
- Bangladesh assumed the BIMSTEC chair in April 2025
- Precedent: 8th BRICS Summit, Goa, October 2016 — first BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit
- Ganges Water Treaty between India and Bangladesh: signed 12 December 1996 for a 30-year term, due to expire 12 December 2026
- BRICS membership expanded from 5 founding members to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE (effective January 2024) and Indonesia (January 2025)