UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q119: 21st ASEAN – India Summit was… — Answer

Q: What is the answer to UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q119?

C. Correct — C, Laos. The ASEAN-India Summit has no fixed address. It meets in nearly every year, alongside the ASEAN Summit, in whichever member state holds the rotating ASEAN chairmanship for that year. Laos chaired ASEAN in 2024, so the ASEAN Summits and the summits with dialogue partners convened at Vientiane. The 21st ASEAN-India Summit was held there on 10 October 2024, with **Laos** as host. Carry away the rule rather than the city: **the ASEAN chair of the year is the venue**. Fix the chairmanship sequence and the venue of the annual ASEAN-centred summits held in that chair's summit week follows from it. Commemorative and special summits with a dialogue partner are the exception, and are hosted by the partner.

UKPSC Prelims 2025 General Studies Paper-I · Question 119 of 149

Verified against the official question booklet. Answer as per UKPSC's provisional answer key.

Answers from UKPSC's provisional answer key. The Commission publishes a provisional key for UKPSC Prelims 2025 and invites objections before issuing a final key. Every answer shown here is the Commission's own provisional answer (key PDF), not our derivation. If the final key changes an answer, this page is updated to match.

21st ASEAN – India Summit was held in:

(a)Indonesia
(b)Philippines
(c)Laos
(d)Vietnam

Answer

Why

Correct — C, Laos.

The ASEAN-India Summit has no fixed address. It meets in nearly every year, alongside the ASEAN Summit, in whichever member state holds the rotating ASEAN chairmanship for that year.

Laos chaired ASEAN in 2024, so the ASEAN Summits and the summits with dialogue partners convened at Vientiane. The 21st ASEAN-India Summit was held there on 10 October 2024, with Laos as host.

Carry away the rule rather than the city: the ASEAN chair of the year is the venue. Fix the chairmanship sequence and the venue of the annual ASEAN-centred summits held in that chair's summit week follows from it.

Commemorative and special summits with a dialogue partner are the exception, and are hosted by the partner.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Indonesia — Indonesia chaired ASEAN in 2023, and that year's ASEAN-India Summit met at Jakarta in September 2023, alongside the 43rd ASEAN Summit.
Indonesia is the right answer to which country chaired ASEAN in 2023 and hosted that year's ASEAN-India Summit at Jakarta.
Jakarta houses the ASEAN Secretariat and India's Mission to ASEAN, which makes it feel like a standing venue. The leaders' summit still travels with the chair.
(b)
Philippines — The Philippines chaired ASEAN in 2017, and that year's ASEAN-India Summit met at Manila in November 2017.
It holds the chairmanship again in 2026, with the 48th ASEAN Summit at Cebu City in May 2026.
So the Philippines answers which country chaired ASEAN in 2017 and holds the 2026 chairmanship — a different turn of the rotation from the one this stem asks about.
(d)
Vietnam — Vietnam chaired ASEAN in 2020. Because of the pandemic, the 17th ASEAN-India Summit was convened by video conference on 12 November 2020, hosted from Hanoi under Vietnam's chairmanship.
Vietnam is the right answer to which country chaired ASEAN in 2020, when its summit week ran online.
The 21st edition belongs to Laos's 2024 chairmanship.

Concept

ASEAN runs a summit season each year. Its chairmanship rotates among the member states, and the chair hosts both the ASEAN Summit and the separate summits ASEAN holds with each of its dialogue partners.

India became an ASEAN dialogue partner in the 1990s and a summit-level partner in 2002, so the ASEAN-India Summit sits inside that season. Its venue is set by whose turn it is to chair, not by India.

Act East is India's institutional channel into Southeast Asia, and this summit is where the relationship is reviewed at leaders' level. Knowing the venue is really knowing the chairmanship calendar.

The same calendar fixes the East Asia Summit and the other ASEAN-centred meetings held in the same week, so one sequence of chair countries answers venue questions across several groupings.

Key facts

The 21st ASEAN-India Summit was held at Vientiane, the capital of Lao PDR, on 10 October 2024.
Laos held the ASEAN chairmanship in 2024; the 44th and 45th ASEAN Summits met at Vientiane that October.
The 21st Summit designated 2025 as the ASEAN-India Year of Tourism.
Indonesia chaired ASEAN in 2023 and hosted the 43rd ASEAN Summit and that year's ASEAN-India Summit at Jakarta.
Malaysia chaired ASEAN in 2025, and the ASEAN-India Summit that October was held at Kuala Lumpur.
Timor-Leste was admitted to ASEAN at the 47th ASEAN Summit at Kuala Lumpur in October 2025.
The Philippines chaired ASEAN in 2017 and holds the 2026 chairmanship, with the 48th ASEAN Summit at Cebu City in May 2026.
India and ASEAN elevated their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership at the 2022 summit at Phnom Penh, marking 30 years of dialogue relations.
The ASEAN Secretariat is at Jakarta, where India maintains a separate Mission to ASEAN.

The ASEAN chair of the year sets the summit venue

2020 chair — Vietnam→Video conference from Hanoi

2023 chair — Indonesia→Jakarta

2024 chair — Laos→Vientiane — 21st ASEAN-India Summit

2025 chair — Malaysia→Kuala Lumpur

Each year's ASEAN-India Summit meets where ASEAN's rotating chair sits; 2024 was Laos, hence Vientiane.

Study next

ASEAN chairmanship rotation and the country holding it in 2026India-ASEAN Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, agreed in 2022East Asia Summit: India's membership from the first summit at Kuala Lumpur in 2005ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement and its ongoing reviewTimor-Leste's accession to ASEAN in October 2025Act East Policy and connectivity projects such as the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway

Common traps

Reading the edition number as a year: the 21st ASEAN-India Summit belongs to 2024, not 2021.
Assuming India hosts the ASEAN-India Summit because India is the dialogue partner; the host is the ASEAN chair of that year.
Treating Jakarta as a permanent venue because the ASEAN Secretariat and India's Mission to ASEAN are located there.
Mixing the ASEAN Summit's own numbering (44th and 45th in 2024) with the ASEAN-India Summit's numbering (21st).
Counting the ASEAN-India Commemorative Summits held at New Delhi in 2012 and 2018 as the annual summit hosted by the chair.

This is a venue-recall item: a numbered edition of the ASEAN-India Summit set against four ASEAN member countries.

The same fact can be turned around — give the year and ask for the chair, offer capitals in place of countries, or pair an edition number with a city inside a statement and ask whether it holds. Anchoring the chairmanship year settles all of those shapes.

Related PYQs

GEO_GS_2026_Q782026

The nearest twin: it asks where the 22nd India-ASEAN Summit met in October 2025, one edition later than this stem. The reasoning is identical — the venue is the chair country's city, Kuala Lumpur under Malaysia's 2025 chairmanship. What differs is the answer format: that paper offers cities, UKPSC offers countries. Vientiane is among its options, and it is the 2024 venue — the answer to this UKPSC stem.

CAPF_GAI_2024_Q1142024

Asks which country chaired the 43rd ASEAN Summit — the chairmanship itself, which is the fact that decides the UKPSC answer. Indonesia held that 2023 chairmanship and hosted those summits at Jakarta. The difference is direction: CAPF asks for the chair of an ASEAN Summit, UKPSC asks for the venue of the India-specific summit a chairmanship year later.

CAPF_GAI_2022_Q1232022

Uses the same body of knowledge — which ASEAN-India Summit edition happened when and in what form — but tests it as a true-or-false statement pairing an edition number with a date, with a trade-partner statement bundled alongside. UKPSC instead offers four countries and asks for the host, so the recall is the same while the answering method is not.

NDA_GAT_2024_II_Q1442024

Also a where-was-it question about an ASEAN-India event, so it rewards the same habit of tracking venues. It differs in what fixes the venue: a festival organised by India's Mission to ASEAN does not follow the rotating chairmanship the way the leaders' summit does, so the rule that answers this UKPSC item will not answer that one.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The country that hosted the 21st ASEAN-India Summit held the ASEAN chairmanship in which year?
- (a)2021
- (b)2022
- (c)2024
- (d)2025
Answerc — Laos hosted the 21st ASEAN-India Summit at Vientiane, and Laos chaired ASEAN in 2024.
2021 fails because the edition number is not the year and Brunei chaired that year; 2022 fails because Cambodia chaired and the summits met at Phnom Penh; 2025 fails because Malaysia chaired and the summit met at Kuala Lumpur.
practice — not a real PYQ
Timor-Leste was formally admitted as a member of ASEAN at the summit held in October 2025 in:
- (a)Vientiane
- (b)Kuala Lumpur
- (c)Jakarta
- (d)Manila
Answerb — Timor-Leste joined at the 47th ASEAN Summit, held at Kuala Lumpur in October 2025 under Malaysia's chairmanship.
Vientiane hosted the 2024 summits under Laos; Jakarta hosted the 2023 summits under Indonesia and houses the ASEAN Secretariat; Manila belongs to the Philippines' chairmanship years, not to October 2025.
practice — not a real PYQ
The annual ASEAN-India Summit is convened:
- (a)at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta each year
- (b)in New Delhi each year
- (c)at a venue alternating between India and Japan
- (d)in the country holding the ASEAN chairmanship, alongside the ASEAN Summit
Answerd — the summit travels with the rotating chairmanship and is held in the chair country during its summit week.
Jakarta hosts the Secretariat rather than the leaders' summit; New Delhi has hosted commemorative summits in 2012 and 2018, which are special editions and not the annual meeting; and Japan holds its own ASEAN-Japan summit, so option c pairs two dialogue partners that ASEAN engages separately.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which country holds the ASEAN chairmanship for the year 2026?
- (a)Philippines
- (b)Singapore
- (c)Myanmar
- (d)Cambodia
Answera — the Philippines chairs ASEAN in 2026, with the 48th ASEAN Summit at Cebu City in May 2026.
Singapore chaired in 2018 and Cambodia in 2022, hosting the Phnom Penh summits that year. Myanmar last chaired in 2014, and the 2026 turn went to the Philippines.