Pakistan is boycotting the two-day South Asian Speakers’ Summit to be hosted by India at Madhya Pradesh’s commercial capital of Indore from Saturday to discuss various social issues like gender equality, women empowerment and climate change.

The summit, being jointly organised by the Indian Parliament and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), will be inaugurated by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan. Presiding officers of Parliament from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka will participate in it.

“The Indore Summit provides an international platform to the parliamentarians of the South Asian region to collectively discuss the developmental concerns of the area,” according to the Lok Sabha Secretariat.

Indian officials say Pakistan too was invited for the summit but it expressed its inability to attend the meet, saying National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq would be occupied with the ongoing session of Pakistan’s Lower House.

it is learnt that Pakistan decided to stay away from the summit in view of the current state of relations between the two countries and the fact that India had decided to boycott the SAARC Summit that was to be hosted by Islamabad in November last year, which eventually led to its indefinite postponement. Pakistan had also expressed its unwillingness to host a conference of Commonwealth countries’ speakers after India threatened to boycott it if Islamabad refused to invite the speaker of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.

Pakistan has also been upset with India for the ‘treatment’ meted out to Sartaj Aziz, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs, when he visited Amritsar in December last year to attend the ‘Heart of Asia’ conference on Afghanistan.

Earlier in January 2016, Speakers of Parliament from South Asia had met for the first time in Dhaka and discussed ways and concrete action for the Parliaments of the region to help implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Dhaka Declaration highlighted the importance of strong Parliamentary action on the SDGs and established the South Asian Speakers' Forum. It was decided that the forum should meet once a year to discuss progress and implementation of the SDGs.

Apart from Pakistan, Myanmar expressed its inability to participate in the summit.

The summit will lay emphasis on sharing experiences and increasing understanding about how Parliaments in the region institutionalise the global goals, capture synergies and build coherence at the policy level.