Quad foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in the capital on Tuesday and build on the discussions held in July last year, keeping alive a grouping that the Donald Trump administration appears to have lost interest in.

The meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue coincides with US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s three-day, four-city visit to India, including Calcutta. It also comes close on the heels of Trump’s visit to China earlier this week. China sees the Quad as an “exclusive clique” aimed at containing it.

Announcing the meeting, the external affairs ministry on Friday said: “In keeping with the Quad vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, the ministers will build on discussions held in Washington D.C. on July 1, 2025. They will exchange views on advancing Quad cooperation across priority areas, review progress on ongoing Quad initiatives, and reflect on recent developments in the Indo-Pacific region and other international issues of mutual concern.”

During their visit to New Delhi, the foreign ministers of Australia and Japan, Penny Wong and Toshimitsu Motegi, and Rubio are expected to hold bilateral meetings with external affairs minister S. Jaishankar and call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

India was to have hosted the Quad summit last year but the strain in bilateral ties with the US over the trade deal and Trump’s repeated claims of having played the mediator between New Delhi and Islamabad during Operation Sindoor put paid to the event in 2025.

First attempted in the early years of this millennium, Trump resurrected the
Quad in his first term in 2017. From ministerial meetings, it became a summit-level engagement during the Biden years and the first official meeting of Rubio after assuming office in 2025 was in the Quad format with his three counterparts.