Bangladesh opted to send a senior representative rather than Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed to the first BIMSTEC Home Ministers' meeting held in New Delhi on Tuesday, with the move coming at a time when relations between the two neighbouring countries remain strained. Home Affairs Senior Secretary Manzur Morshed Chowdhury has been tasked with heading Bangladesh's delegation at the session, which is being convened under the chairmanship of Indian Home Minister Amit Shah.

On Monday, Nepal's Home Minister Sudhan Gurung arrived in New Delhi to take part in the gathering. Upon landing at Indira Gandhi International Airport, he was received by Charge d'Affaires Dr Surendra Thapa, alongside embassy staff and representatives from the Indian government. Gurung is scheduled to return to Nepal on 14 October.

Delegates from all seven nations belonging to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation — known by the acronym BIMSTEC — are convening under the theme "Anchored in Security: Sailing Towards Prosperity." The agenda is centred on deepening collective responses to terrorism, transnational organised crime, narcotics trafficking, and related cross-border threats.

Dhaka's decision to dispatch a senior secretary rather than its Home Minister came against a backdrop of friction in bilateral ties between Bangladesh and India. A Bangladeshi delegation will nonetheless be present at the gathering. No explanation was provided by officials regarding the Home Minister's absence or the circumstances surrounding the vacant post.

Bangladesh assumed the chairmanship of BIMSTEC when April 2025 arrived. Tarique Rahman, who held the BIMSTEC Chair position at the time, was among those who did not attend the BRICS summit outreach gathering held in New Delhi that September.

Home and interior ministry officials from member states convened the day before formal ministerial talks got under way. Topics under discussion span disrupting terrorist networks, tackling human trafficking, cutting off financial flows that fund extremist activity, addressing money laundering, and strengthening intelligence-sharing arrangements among law enforcement bodies.

Two days before the current gathering, representatives of all seven member states convened in New Delhi on 28 and 29 September for the 11th session of the BIMSTEC Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime. Discussions at that session focused on evaluating threats to regional stability and identifying pathways toward stronger collective responses.

Roughly eight years passed between the 2018 Kathmandu summit — where BIMSTEC member states committed to closer ties among their law enforcement, intelligence, and security bodies — and the convening of the grouping's inaugural dedicated gathering of home ministers. Seven nations — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand — came together under the BIMSTEC framework when it was established in 1997. Delegates gathered with the stated goal of advancing practical collaboration on shared security threats.