India not officially participating in or backing Track 2 Pak talks: Foreign secy

THe amerindic regime is non officially participating in or supporting any caterpillar track 2 engagements betwixt India and Pakistan and does not take cognizance of such events, foreign secretary Vikram Misri said on Monday against the backdrop of reports of several such meetings over the past year.Speaking to reporters in Seychelles on the margins of a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Misri made three broad points – dozens of Track 2 engagements are held around the world on a range of subjects, these are private events and the Indian government is not involved in them, and such meetings “don’t hold much value” as far as India is concerned.Misri’s comments came in response to a question about a recent Track 2 engagement between India and Pakistan that was reported by HT. He acknowledged the reports and said there was “nothing official” about such meetings.“Firstly, look, dozens of these kind of events take place in dozens of places around the world on a whole variety of subjects. So, there’s nothing new, nothing special about these events,” Misri said.“Secondly, as far as we are concerned, these are private events organised by private parties. There’s nothing official about them as far as we are concerned,” he said. “I mean, obviously, I cannot speak for the government of Pakistan, but as far as the government of India is concerned, there is no official participation, no official support or involvement in these visits.” He added, “And thirdly, we really take no cognizance of these events, they really don’t hold much value as far as we are concerned.”Anybody from India participating in these events, including retired diplomats or military officials and members of civil society, “speak for themselves and they represent their own point of view”, Misri said. The participants “do not in any way” represent the view of the Indian government, he said.There has been no formal and structured dialogue between India and Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai attacks led to the snapping of diplomatic engagements at the time. Though the two sides have held official meetings since then, they could not reach common ground on resuming official talks. Informal contacts between senior security officials in third countries led to the resumption of the ceasefire on the Line of Control (LoC) in February 2021.Ties went into deep freeze after the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025, with India suspending the Indus Waters Treaty and imposing a range of punitive measures in the diplomatic and economic domains.Track 2 meetings, by their very nature, are unofficial and non-governmental discussions. Senior RSS functionary Dattatreya Hosabale noted during an interview in May that the government should protect India’s security in the face of the actions of Pakistan’s military and political establishment but doors should be kept open for dialogue. “But at the same time, we need not close the doors. We should always be ready to engage them in a dialogue,” he said.Soon after this, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat told an event in Thiruvananthapuram that if India defeats Pakistan “beyond repair” in a future war, its people will have to be brought into Bharata’s fold or live peacefully in their own country. For both scenarios, “the doors of dialogue must always remain open”, he added.