Maldives to not renew hydrographic survey agreement with India: President Muizzu

Maldives that demanded India to take back its troops from the island nation has now announced that it will not renew the agreement to conduct hydrographic surveys with India. President Mohamed Muizzu who is widely seen as pro-China ascended to power in a strong anti-India stance. He has also vowed to ensure Maldives’ sovereignty. Nevertheless, the island nation recently signed a defence cooperation agreement with China for free military assistance. 

Muizzu announced on Wednesday that Maldives will acquire the facilities and machines required to carry out the hydrographic surveys by itself. Maldives is also working to establish a 24X7 monitoring system for the Maldivian waters to ensure control of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) despite its significantly large area.

The Maldivian President said that the nation’s defence ministry is making efforts to obtain the facilities required for conducting the hydrographic surveys by the country itself. “This will allow Maldives to conduct the underwater surveys of the country by ourselves. We will then acquire all insights of our underwater features and prepare charts, they will be drawn by us,” he said, according to Edition.mv, a news portal. 

“We decided not to renew the agreement entered into with the Indian government to scan and acquire all insights into our underwater bodies. All these underwater details are our property, our heritage,” Muizzu said. He added that Maldives earlier had to purchase all such maps and survey data from India.

The agreement to conduct hydrographic surveys of Maldives’ underwater features with India was signed by the former administration, led by former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. The last hydrographic survey was conducted in collaboration with India’s Hydrography Office in January 2021 as part of the agreement signed by PM Modi during his visit to Maldives in 2019.

In yet another event earlier, Muizzu had said that although the Exclusive Economic Zone is part of Maldives, they did not have the capacity to monitor the area. “God willing, our work will commence in March. We will establish a 24X7 monitoring system during this month,” he had said in an event on Saturday. 

India-Maldives ties have suffered a setback since Muizzu assumed office last year. The recent row after which three Maldivian ministers were suspended for their derogatory comments on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for promoting Lakshadweep also did not help matters. The pro-China Muizzu government had earlier announced that it is reviewing more than 100 agreements signed with India by the previous regimes.