NEW DELHI: India and Russia held major consultation in the realm of nuclear research away from the public eye ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Brazil in July.Nuclear energy was a key element at Modi-Putin talks. Both countries are discussing to set up Russian assisted 22 nuclear power projects in India.Last month a scientific forum was held at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in the Russian city of Dubna with support from both the governments. The aim of the forum were to strengthen the existing co-operation further as well as explore the possibility of stronger ties between scientific research centers of India and JINR in the fields of fundamental theoretical and experimental physics.JINR is a large multidisciplinary scientific-research institute with unique set of the basic research instruments executing its program on basis of broad international cooperation, including 150 institutes and universities of Russia. JINR could serve as a “bridge” connecting Russian organizations with institutes and universities of India, facilitating mutually beneficial cooperation on Russian and Indian scientists, according to officials of the both governments.The forum was participated by more than 60 leading reserchers from JINR member states and 20 reputed experts from leading scientific research institutions of India, in particular from TIFR (Mumbai), IMSc (Chennai), IISc (Bangaluru), IOP (Bhubaneswar), IACS (Kolkata), Calcutta University, BARC (Mumbai). Currently there were two Indian scientists who are working at JINR as employees.One very important part of the forum was a series of visits of the Indian scientists to the unique experimental facilities of JINR that included the Nuclotron-M in LHEP, accelerator complex in FLNR, IBR-2 reactor and spectrometer complex in FLNP.JINR was established through the Convention signed on 26 March 1956 in Moscow by representatives of eleven founding states to unite their scientific and material potential in order to study fundamental properties of matter. It was registered with the United Nations on 1 February 1957. The Institute is situated in Dubna 120 km to the north of Moscow. The main fields of JINR’s activity are theoretical and experimental studies in elementary particle physics, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics.JINR comprises seven Laboratories, each being comparable with a large institute in the scale and scope of investigations performed.JINR has at present 18 Member States: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cuba, Czech Republic, Georgia, Kazakhstan, D. P. Republic of Korea, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Participation of Egypt, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Republic of South Africa and Serbia. This is on based on bilateral agreements signed on the governmental level.