Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held a telephonic conversation with Deputy Prime Minister & Minister for Defence of Australia Richard Marles today. This dialogue took place as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is on a four day visit to India.
India and Australia are pursuing a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and the defence cooperation between the two countries has been consistently deepening in recent years.
Both the Ministers reaffirmed their commitment towards further strengthening the bilateral defence relationship. The telecon was reflective of the trust and friendship the two countries share especially in matters related to defence and security.
India and Australia upgraded bilateral relationship from ‘Strategic Partnership’ in 2009 to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) in 2020. Over the years, an array of institutional mechanism has been put in place to promote bilateral co-operation.
During PM Modi’s visit to Australia in November 2014, both sides decided to extend defence cooperation to cover research, development and industry engagement and agreed to hold regular meetings at the level of the Defence Minister, conduct regular maritime exercises and convene regular service-to-service talks.
As part of ongoing engagements, 2nd India-Australia JWG meeting on Research, Industry and Materiel Cooperation was held at Canberra on 22nd November 2022. India-Australia Joint Military Exercise AUSTRAHIND 2022 was held in Rajasthan from 28 November to 11 December 2022 between Indian Army and the Australian Army. This was the first exercise in the series of AUSTRA HIND with participation of all arms and services contingent from both armies.
