India to Host 7th Colombo Security Conclave NSA Meet on Nov 20
Delhi NSA summit targets rising maritime and terror threats
India is set to host the seventh National Security Advisers’ meeting of the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC) in New Delhi on November 20, convening the region’s top security officials for urgent discussions aimed at fortifying collective defences across the strategically vital Indian Ocean Region at a time of heightened geopolitical friction.
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval will personally chair the closed-door deliberations, receiving his counterparts from the four full member states—Maldives, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh—while Seychelles joins as an observer and Malaysia participates as a specially invited guest, according to an official statement released by the Ministry of External Affairs on Tuesday evening. The composition reflects the conclave’s expanding footprint and India’s determination to build an inclusive security architecture that excludes extra-regional dominance.
The one-day summit will conduct an in-depth review of ongoing initiatives under the CSC’s five operational pillars: maritime safety and security, countering terrorism and radicalisation, combating trafficking and transnational organised crime, cybersecurity and the protection of critical infrastructure, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Participants are expected to endorse a detailed Roadmap and Action Plan extending through 2026, which will include new joint exercises, intelligence-sharing protocols, capacity-building programmes, and coordinated patrols in key sea lanes.
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What began in 2011 as a modest trilateral maritime dialogue among India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives has transformed into a formal six-member institution following the signing of the CSC Charter and founding documents in Colombo in August 2024. The rapid institutionalisation underscores the shared recognition among littoral and island states that traditional and non-traditional threats—ranging from terrorist infiltration routes to cyberattacks on undersea cables and illegal fishing fleets—are increasingly intertwined and demand coordinated, multilateral responses rather than unilateral measures.
The upcoming meeting builds directly on the sixth NSA gathering hosted by Mauritius in December 2023 and a series of technical-level engagements, including the most recent virtual Deputy NSA conference in July 2024. With the Indian Ocean emerging as a central theatre of great-power competition, Wednesday’s session in the Indian capital is being viewed by regional analysts as a critical milestone in consolidating a rules-based security order led by littoral states themselves, sending a clear message of strategic autonomy and cooperative resilience.
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