Pakistan has received an invitation from India to attend a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation forum in New Delhi, the Foreign Office confirmed on Friday 6 November, but has not yet decided whether to attend. Foreign Office spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan told his weekly briefing in Islamabad that the leadership would decide on participation after consultations with the relevant institutions and completion of the required procedures.

The event is the inaugural SCO Civilisational Dialogue Forum, in New Delhi from 20 to 22 November. India invited all ten SCO member states on 28 October, and the forum is organised by India's foreign and culture ministries. Diplomatic reporting says Pakistan's National Heritage and Culture Minister, Aurangzeb Khan Khichi, has been invited to attend. If he goes, it would be the first visit by a senior Pakistani minister to India since the two countries' military confrontation in May 2025.

Visas and pilgrims also raised

At the same briefing, Khan said Pakistan had not stopped issuing visas to Indian citizens and there was no ban on a visa for the chief minister of Indian Punjab, Bhagwant Mann. He said more than 4,000 Sikh pilgrims had been issued visas this year, and that Pakistan remained ready to welcome pilgrims through the Kartarpur Corridor once India lifted its restrictions on movement through it, suspended since May 2025.

A forum, not a bilateral meeting

The invitation is a multilateral one, issued under India's obligations as host, and it does not by itself signal a resumption of bilateral talks. The last visit by a Pakistani foreign minister to India was Bilawal Bhutto Zardari's trip to Goa for an SCO meeting in 2023. Khan also said the first consultative meeting of the Makkah Alliance member countries with Iran had shown the alliance's defensive and peaceful objectives.