Sibal shared a post on his social media asking what India has won and what Pakistan has lost.

“Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Invitation to Government Leaders Jaishankar to Go to Islamabad… What has India gained? What has Pakistan lost?” he asked.

MEA said on Friday that External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will travel to Pakistan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit to be held in October. When asked about India’s participation in the upcoming SCO summit, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, “EAM Jaishankar will lead a delegation to Pakistan to participate in the SCO summit to be held in Islamabad from October 15 to 16 are held…”

Earlier in August, India received an invitation from Pakistan for the in-person meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG). Jaiswal confirmed Islamabad’s invitation during a weekly media briefing on August 30. In May 2023, Pakistani Foreign Minister Billawal Bhutto Zardari had visited India for the SCO meeting in Goa. This was the first visit of a Foreign Minister of Pakistan to India in six years.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization

The SCO is a permanent intergovernmental international organization established on June 15, 2001 in Shanghai by Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its predecessor was the mechanism of the Shanghai Five.

Currently, the SCO countries include nine Member States: India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.The SCO has three observer states: Afghanistan, Mongolia and Belarus.

At the Samarkand SCO Summit in 2022, the process of raising the status of the Republic of Belarus within the Organization to the level of a Member State began. The SCO has 14 dialogue partners: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Egypt, Cambodia, Qatar, Kuwait, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Sri Lanka.