Modi, Aliyev meet for first time as India, Azerbaijan seek to reset ties
The Indian and Azerbaijani leaderships held their first-ever direct meeting on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Bishkek, described as an icebreaker in political ties.
The meeting followed a period of lukewarm India-Azerbaijan relations and came after foreign office consultations between the two countries were resumed earlier in 2026 after nearly four years.
A separate meeting was also held with the President of Tajikistan at the same summit, part of India's broader outreach to Central Asian and Caucasus states present in the SCO-Plus format.
The engagement takes place against the backdrop of a developing Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process, an issue on which India and Azerbaijan have historically held differing positions.
India-Azerbaijan Relations and the Armenia-Azerbaijan Context
India's ties with Azerbaijan have been affected by India's close defence relationship with Armenia, Azerbaijan's rival in the decades-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, while Azerbaijan has maintained a close strategic partnership with Pakistan. This triangular dynamic (India-Armenia vs Azerbaijan-Pakistan-Turkey) has kept India-Azerbaijan political relations subdued despite economic and energy-sector engagement.
Key Details
- Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region within Azerbaijan's internationally recognised borders, was the site of wars in the early 1990s, in 2020, and a 2023 Azerbaijani military operation that led to the exodus of its ethnic Armenian population.
- A framework agreement, initialled in August 2025 in Washington DC between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaderships, centres on the "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity" (TRIPP) — a transit corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave through Armenian territory.
- Under the framework, Azerbaijan has agreed to border delimitation and to renounce future territorial claims against Armenia, contingent on Armenia removing related references from its constitution (a change requiring a referendum, slated for 2027).
- India has supplied Armenia with defence platforms including the Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher system and other indigenous weapons systems in recent years, a factor that has historically strained India-Azerbaijan defence-adjacent ties.
The first-ever direct Modi-Aliyev meeting, held as Armenia and Azerbaijan move (however slowly) toward a negotiated peace, gives India an opening to normalise ties with Baku without being seen as working against the peace process, since a settled Armenia-Azerbaijan relationship reduces the zero-sum framing that previously constrained India's regional options.
India's Connectivity and Energy Stakes in the South Caucasus
The South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) sits at the junction of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and East-West energy/transport routes linking Central Asia, the Caspian, and Europe, making it strategically relevant to India's connectivity diversification beyond Pakistan-transit routes.
Key Details
- The INSTC, a multi-modal (ship/rail/road) corridor agreement signed in 2000 between India, Iran, and Russia, connects Mumbai to Northern Europe via Iran, the Caspian Sea, and Russia, with Azerbaijan forming part of the alternative Caspian-crossing route.
- Azerbaijan is a significant hydrocarbon producer and a transit hub for Caspian energy routes (e.g., the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline), relevant to India's energy diversification interests.
- India's SCO-Plus engagements at Bishkek (with Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and others) reflect a broader Central Asia policy anchored in the India-Central Asia Summit format (first held in January 2022) and India's Connect Central Asia Policy (2012).
Reduced hostility in the South Caucasus improves the operating environment for INSTC-linked connectivity projects that India has long sought to advance as an alternative to routes running through Pakistan.
- The Modi-Aliyev meeting in Bishkek (September 2026) was the first-ever direct interaction between the two leaders.
- India-Azerbaijan foreign office consultations resumed in 2026 after a gap of nearly four years.
- The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace framework was initialled in Washington DC in August 2025; a constitutional referendum in Armenia on related territorial-claim language is slated for 2027.
- The INSTC agreement dates to 2000, signed by India, Iran, and Russia.