After over ten years, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Pakistan as the first senior official from Delhi. Although DG South Asia Ilyas Nizami, not a cabinet member, met him at the airport upon his arrival in Islamabad on Tuesday for a heads-of-government meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, his arrival was widely reported.
When former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari went to Goa, India for the SCO conference, something similar happened. He had been met at the airport by an official from the Indian External Affairs Ministry.
When Pakistani journalist Munizae Jahangir used the phrase to describe the development, Indian writer Suhasini Haidar speculated that the visit might be “quid pro quo.”