Pranab likely to lead India delegation

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the United Nations climate summit at Copenhagen will depend on the possibility of a binding climate treaty.

Updated on: Dec 1, 2009, 23:42:49 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the United Nations climate summit at Copenhagen will depend on the possibility of a binding climate treaty. If that does not happen, the government is likely to nominate Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for the meeting of heads of the state slated for December 18.

The summit is starting on December 7 and will end of December 18.

As many as 65 heads of the state — such as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — have agreed to participate in the December 18 plenary, where a political statement is expected in absence of a consensus on a global climate treaty.

Mukherjee is the second seniormost cabinet minister after Singh. “If the PM decides not to go, then he (Mukherjee) is likely to visit to show that India is for a strong action on climate mitigation,” a senior government official said on the condition of anonymity.

A final decision is likely to be made in third week after examining the outcome of the first round of the ministerial
conference.

The finance minister’s office said the options for Mukherjee are open.

An official in the Prime

Minister’s Office said Manmohan Singh was yet to make up his mind on the visit.

During his conversation with US President Barak Obama, Singh said India would play a constructive role at the Copenhagen summit.

The Indian delegation of up to 35 persons will include parliamentarians such as Murli Manohar Joshi (BJP), Sitaram Yechury CPI(M), Bhartruhari Mahtab (BJD) and M.S. Saminathanan, a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha.

“We have to take a strong position of not accepting any binding emission cuts at Copenhagen while continuing with our domestic action,” Sitaram Yechury told HT.

Joshi said India could not be expected of taking emission reduction target, as its contribution to climate change was negligible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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