BRICS Meeting Concludes with Opposition Absence and BJP-Ruled States' Attendance

The two-day BRICS meeting, held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, concluded on Sunday. However, the international event also witnessed political sparring as chief ministers of opposition-ruled states stayed away from the meeting and the lavish dinner organised to mark it. All chief ministers of the country were invited for the meeting. There has been no official comment on the absence of opposition leaders, but sources in Telangana and Himachal Pradesh say that chief ministers Revanth Reddy and Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu could not attend due to their pre-scheduled engagements. The meeting and dinner were attended by six chief ministers of BJP-ruled states. These included Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Maharashtra's Devendra Fadnavis, West Bengal's Suvendu Adhikari, Assam's Himanta Biswa Sarma, Uttarakhand's Pushkar Singh Dhami, and Delhi's Rekha Gupta. On the other hand, opposition-ruled states such as Kerala's VD Satheesan, Tamil Nadu's Vijay, Karnataka's DK Shivakumar, Ray Sukhwinder Reddy, and Sukhwinder Singh did not attend the dinner, which was the first time the Congress had boycotted the Governing Council meeting since July 2023.