{"id":11579,"date":"2025-12-16T11:05:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T05:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=11579"},"modified":"2025-12-16T14:03:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:33:22","slug":"what-is-exercise-ekatha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-exercise-ekatha\/","title":{"rendered":"Exercise Ekatha"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Exercise Ekatha 2025 Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff (DCNS), Indian Navy, is on an official visit to Maldives to attend the closing ceremony of Ex Ekatha 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Exercise Ekatha 2025<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Established in 2017,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Exercise Ekatha is an <\/span><b>annual bilateral maritime exercise <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">between the<\/span><b> Indian Navy and the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF).<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It aims to enhance bilateral maritime cooperation, and <\/span><b>2025 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">marks its <\/span><b>eighth edition.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The exercise involved a series of professional interactions designed to <\/span><b>boost interoperability and operational collaboration <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">between the two navies.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Activities included technical and combat diving, boarding operations, firing drills, demolition and explosive handling, asymmetric warfare tactics, and special heli-borne operation drills.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Key Facts about Maldives<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is an <\/span><b>independent island country<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the <\/span><b>north-central Indian Ocean.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It consists of a chain of about <\/span><b>1,200 small coral islands<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and sandbanks (some 200 of which are inhabited), grouped in clusters, or atolls.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It has a total land area of 298 sq.km.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is <\/span><b>Asia&#8217;s smallest country by area.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the islands of the country are dispersed across about 90,000 sq.km. of the ocean.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The country has<\/span><b> no rivers or streams <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the <\/span><b>average elevation<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is <\/span><b>under 2 meters, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">making it <\/span><b>highly vulnerable to sea-level rise.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Gan <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is the country&#8217;s <\/span><b>largest island.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Formerly a British colony,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the Maldives became an <\/span><b>independent nation in 1965.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Capital: Male.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">O<\/span><b>fficial language: Dhivehi (an Indo-European language)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; Arabic, Hindi, and English are also spoken.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Religion<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><b>Islam <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is the <\/span><b>state religion<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and plays a central role in national governance.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Economy<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Heavily dependent on <\/span><b>tourism<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, along with <\/span><b>fisheries and foreign aid.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Form of Government<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: The 2008 Constitution defines a <\/span><b>presidential system<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with <\/span><b>direct elections<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for a maximum of two five-year terms.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pib.gov.in\/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2204321&amp;reg=3&amp;lang=2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">PIB<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exercise Ekatha is an annual bilateral maritime exercise between the Indian Navy and the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF). Read more about Exercise Ekatha, Aim, Countries, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":78157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4231,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-11579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-exercise-ekatha","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}