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Rajnath Singh to visit Sri Lanka this week, first Indian defence minister in nearly four decades - The New Indian Express

NEW DELHI: Defence minister Rajnath Singh will travel to Sri Lanka this week for a three-day official visit, the first by an Indian defence minister to the island nation since K C Pant, defence minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet, visited in 1988.

Singh will hold talks with the Sri Lankan leadership on a range of issues and interact with the Indian diaspora in Colombo, the defence ministry said in a statement on Sunday. He will lead a delegation of senior officials from the defence and external affairs ministries.

The ministry said the visit would further strengthen bilateral ties in mutually beneficial areas, including a “strong maritime & defence partnership”.

The two sides are expected to sign three fresh defence agreements during the visit, according to reports in New Delhi and Colombo. It is learnt that one is understood to cover the supply of Indian air-defence guns. The other two are expected to link the cadet corps of the two countries and to expand cooperation between the Sri Lanka Defence College and Indian defence colleges. The India-Sri Lanka defence cooperation MoU signed last year is also due for review.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who has retained the defence portfolio since taking office in September 2024, is expected to be Singh’s principal interlocutor. Singh is also likely to meet Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, and hold talks at the military headquarters with defence secretary Sampath Thuyacontha and the three service chiefs.

The visit comes three years after Singh’s proposed trip to Sri Lanka in September 2023 was cancelled a day before his departure. The itinerary had included Colombo, Trincomalee and Nuwara Eliya, with talks scheduled with then president Ranil Wickremesinghe. The defence ministry had cited “unavoidable circumstances” for the cancellation.

The deferment came amid a diplomatic row over a proposed visit by the Chinese research vessel Shi Yan 6. New Delhi had raised concerns over Chinese research and surveillance ships operating in waters close to India. The issue followed the docking of the Chinese tracking vessel Yuan Wang-5 at Hambantota in 2022.

Defence cooperation has since acquired a formal framework. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Colombo in April last year, the two countries signed their first memorandum of understanding on defence cooperation. The five-year agreement provides an umbrella framework covering joint exercises, training, capacity building and high-level exchanges.

Thuyacontha, who signed the agreement with foreign secretary Vikram Misri, said at the time that India trains around 750 Sri Lankan military personnel annually. Dissanayake had also assured Modi that Sri Lankan territory would not be used in a manner detrimental to India’s security interests.

The defence ministry statement underlined India’s assistance after Cyclone Ditwah, which made landfall on November 27, 2025. Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre put the toll at 465 dead and 366 missing, with more than 1.55 million people affected across all 25 districts.

India launched Operation Sagar Bandhu on November 28. INS Vikrant and INS Udaygiri, already berthed at Colombo, delivered relief supplies, followed by helicopters, two National Disaster Response Force teams of 80 rescuers, a field hospital and more than 1,100 tonnes of material. External affairs minister S Jaishankar announced a $450 million reconstruction package in December.

Singh’s visit follows a series of high-level military exchanges. Sri Lankan Navy chief Vice Admiral Damian Fernando was in India from August 26 to 29 on his first overseas visit since taking charge, calling on Chief of Defence Staff Gen N S Raja Subramani, defence secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh and Navy chief Adm Krishna Swaminathan.

India has also widened maritime cooperation through the transfer of Dornier aircraft, coastal surveillance radars, the Colombo Security Conclave and the proposed Trincomalee energy hub, as China expands its economic and maritime footprint on the island.