Modi Govt Chooses Low Profile at Trump's Gaza Conference; INDIA Group Still Stuck but NDA Works Out Seat Sharing for Bihar

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Snapshot of the day

October 13, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

As more than 20 world leaders gathered in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh to chart Gaza’s future – the event will be chaired by US President Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – India’s seat looked conspicuously under-filled. The reason is straightforward. Narendra Modi did not want to be in the same country—let alone conference room—with his Pakistani counterpart when Trump is on a peacemaking overdrive.

India’s invitation for the leaders’ summit was extended separately by both Egypt and the White House but Prime Minister Modi decided neither he nor External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar would attend. Instead, the relatively junior and inconsequential Minister of State, Kirit Vardhan Singh, was press-ganged. Besides Trump, the summit is being attended by a host of regional leaders, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Turkish President Recip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

With Sharif attending, Modi may have feared an impromptu peace move by Trump—who reminded reporters on his flight to Egypt about how he ended the India-Pakistan fighting in May. With the Modi government telling the Indian cricket team not to shake hands with their Pakistani counterparts, the optics of Modi appearing in the same photo frame as the Pakistani PM would surely be considered politically deadly. True to form, Trump spoke again about India and Pakistan at Sharm-el-Sheikh. But sending a junior minister means India has reconciled itself to its voice now carrying less weight at the summit where efforts are being made to push regional stability,