New Delhi: National security advisors of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) grouping began on Tuesday under India's chairship.

India's NSA Ajit Doval chaired the virtual meeting.

The 13th BRICS Summit is a series of events that are being held under India's Chairship in 2021 .

This is the third time India is hosting the BRICS Summit after 2012 and 2016. The theme for this edition is 'BRICS @ 15: Intra-BRICS Cooperation for Continuity, Consolidation and Consensus', BRICS India 2021 informed in a press release.

The meeting of NSAs of the member countries is being amid the held the Taliban's hostile takeover of Afghanistan and discussion on the future of Afghanistan is expected to be the agenda.

The meeting of the NSAs aims to strengthen security cooperation among the member countries.

Under India's chairship in the earlier summit, space agencies heads of the BRICS member nations signed an agreement for cooperation in remote sensing satellite data sharing.

The agreement enables building a virtual constellation of specified remote sensing satellites of BRICS space agencies and their respective ground stations that will receive the data. This will contribute to strengthening multilateral cooperation among BRICS space agencies in meeting the challenges faced by mankind, such as global climate change, major disasters and environmental protection, the grouping had put out in a statement.

This July, in a three day meeting of the BRICS Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues the grouping agreed on various proposals circulated by India, for strengthening and increasing the intra-BRICS cooperation and trade.