Modi is courting the member countries of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC)to fail the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), mainly to isolate Pakistan in South Asia. For this purpose, Modi is treating the BIMSTEC[(India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan also are SAARC members), Myanmar and Thailand are its members], as an alternative to the SAARC. This is part of India’s strategic objective to establish its hegemony in South Asia by preferring the BIMSTEC over the SAARC, as deactivation of the SAARC would mean the exclusion of Pakistan from the South Asian affairs, as is not the member of the BIMSTEC. Although Afghanistan and the Maldives are also not BIMSTEC members, India has a robust and strong relationship with Afghanistan, and during his recent visit to the Maldives, and his meeting with President, Ibrahim Solih, Modi has almost succeeded in resetting India’s relations with the Maldives to contest China’s increasing influence. India is trying to exclude Pakistan from South Asian countries summit meetings because it is the only country which is capable of resisting India’s hegemony in South Asia. The SAARC is being made dysfunctional by not attending its summits by India and few other countries, who are under pressure from India. For example, the SAARC summit, which was due to be held in 2016 in Pakistan, had to be cancelled as India refused to attend that by alleging Pakistan for supporting terrorism and India also pressured Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka not to attend the summit. Since then, because of India’s negative role, SAARC summits have not been held. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that Modi Government is considering BIMSTEC as an alternative to the SAARC. As stated in the CNN-News-18 dated 28 May 2019, unlike 2014, when Modi invited all SAARC member countries, heads of governments to attend his swearing in ceremony, this time, to take charge as PM for the second time, Modi ignored the SAARC and instead, invited leaders from the BIMSTEC countries, like Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. The invitations this time have given one strong message that it will prefer BIMSTEC over the SAARC to exclude Pakistan from the South Asian grouping. Modi is likely to pursue his already failed old rhetoric of blaming Pakistan for supporting terrorism to undermine its international standing and to crush the freedom struggle in Jammu and Kashmir by terming it as terrorism As published in the Economic Times of India dated 6 June 2019, in an apparent reference to Pakistan, India’s new External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said that SAARC has problems, and that BIMSTEC leaders were invited for swearing-in of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, last month because there is energy, mindset and possibility in the latter’s regional grouping which fits in with India’s very optimistic vision of economic cooperation. As per media reports, Modi’s strategy of playing up BIMSTEC and completely ignoring SAARC is no surprise that Modi is sending out a clear message of BIMSTEC, being a better choice for India than SAARC, where Pakistan is the Chair since 2016. Therefore, there would be negligible interest on the part of India in re-starting dialogue via SAARC or a bilateral dialogue with Pakistan. This Modi is doing despite the fact that BIMSTEC cannot act as an alternative to the SAARC, because three important members of the SAARC, like Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives are not the members of the BIMSTEC, and all other SAARC member countries are also not in favour of ditching the SAARC. In fact, the Modi Government prefers the BIMSTEC over SAARC as part of its larger agenda of undermining Pakistan’s nuclear status and crushing the Kashmiris’ legitimate and peaceful freedom struggle in Jammu and Kashmir by equating it with terrorism and blaming Pakistan for supporting terrorism to spoil Pakistan’s relations with the US and undercutting world support for the Kashmiris’ freedom struggle. India’s this strategy is also meant to reduce China’s increasing influence in the SAARC region by increasing India’s relations with the BIMSTEC countries, as five SAARC member countries such as India, Bangldesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka are also the members of the BIMSTEC. In view of the above Modi is likely to pursue his already failed old rhetoric of blaming Pakistan for supporting terrorism to undermine its international standing and to crush the freedom struggle in Jammu and Kashmir by terming it as terrorism. By doing so Modi also aims to dent Pakistan’s relations with the US and EU to fulfil his wishful thinking that Pakistan should be placed under sanctions. In this context, Modi will also continue to oppose the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and make efforts that Pakistan is either kept in the FATF’s grey list or moved to the black list to harm its economy and hurt China’s interests to get US sympathy. Therefore, there are least chances of India positively responding to Pakistan’s offers of holding bilateral dialogue to resolve the Jammu and Kashmir dispute and even if India agrees for the talks it will avoid discussing the Kashmir dispute. The writer is a former Research Fellow of Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), Islamabad and Senior Research Fellow, Strategic Vision Institute, Islamabad