Rubio begins three-day India visit in Mumbai, with talks with Jaishankar and a Jamnagar stop

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio begins a three-day visit to India on Tuesday, October 20, and is scheduled to land at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport at 2:15 pm, the Ministry of External Affairs said, according to a PTI report published by Siasat. He is expected to hold talks with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in Mumbai on Tuesday afternoon and to travel to Jamnagar in Gujarat on Wednesday. It is his second visit to India this year, after a trip in May that included a Quad foreign ministers' meeting.

The itinerary

According to The Week, citing the MEA, Rubio will lay a wreath at the Taj memorial to the victims of the 26/11 attacks before the bilateral talks at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. In the evening he is to attend a reception marking 250 years of US independence at the Jio World Convention Centre.

On Wednesday he is to tour Reliance Industries' refining complex at Jamnagar and meet its chairman, Mukesh Ambani, The Week reported. It said Rubio is also expected to meet Gautam Adani and Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekaran. PTI said he is expected to be accompanied by a large business delegation.

Al Jazeera, in a report published on October 18, said Rubio would arrive on Sunday from Samarkand, where he attended a C5+1 summit with Central Asian states, and hold the Mumbai talks on Monday. The MEA schedule cited by PTI and The Week places his arrival and the talks on Tuesday.

The agenda

MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the talks would cover energy, trade and investment, defence, and critical and emerging technologies, PTI reported. The Week said the agenda also includes the situation in West Asia and the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership. The US State Department said Rubio would discuss the strategic partnership and energy cooperation and meet business leaders, according to Al Jazeera.

Speaking in Uzbekistan before the trip, Rubio said a trade agreement was close. "We're trying to finalise the trade deal with India right now. We're very close to doing that," he said, according to PTI. PTI said he also suggested that a US waiver for India's purchases of Russian oil was linked to the trade decision. Jaishankar recently said the trade talks were nearing a landing point, according to the same report.

Why Mumbai, not New Delhi

No official reason has been given for the trip leaving out the capital, Al Jazeera reported. It said the State Department framed the visit around energy and investment, and that some reporting linked its timing to fuel prices, a concern for US voters ahead of the November midterm elections.

The choice of venue has drawn criticism in India, according to Al Jazeera. US Ambassador Sergio Gor said at a Bloomberg forum that Washington expected Jaishankar and others to travel to Mumbai to meet Rubio. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh called the ambassador's statement extraordinary, Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi wrote that Rubio had summoned his employee to Mumbai, and Congress MP Pawan Khera called it a new low for the government, the outlet reported. The government had not publicly responded to the criticism in the reports read.

The state of ties

Relations have been strained by trade and other disputes. PTI listed punitive US tariffs imposed last year, President Donald Trump's remarks on the May 2025 India-Pakistan clashes, changes to US immigration policy and the H-1B visa fee, and restrictions on a green-card processing programme used by Indian IT firms including Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro.

Al Jazeera reported that the US imposed a 50% tariff on most Indian goods in August 2025, that a February framework lowered it to 18%, and that negotiations have since stalled. It cited Carnegie Endowment analyst Sameer Lalwani as writing that Indian public opinion of the US is at a record low, even though bilateral trade grew nearly 12% in 2025 to about $240 billion.