India to send 4 officers to UN to boost diplomatic presence

According to South Block, R Ravindran, a 1999 batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer and presently joint secretary (Central and West Africa), will join the Indian Permanent Mission to the UN in New York with a rank equivalent to that of a DPR. Pratik Mathur, a 2007 IFS officer and deputy secretary (PMO), will join as a counsellor.

Updated on: Aug 11, 2020, 05:03:38 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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India has decided to upgrade its diplomatic presence at the UN before taking over as a non-permanent member of the Security Council in January 2021 by appointing an additional deputy permanent representative (DPR) and a counsellor to handle UNSC matters. External affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will personally review India’s stint at the UNSC every month.

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According to South Block, R Ravindran, a 1999 batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer and presently joint secretary (Central and West Africa), will join the Indian Permanent Mission to the UN in New York with a rank equivalent to that of a DPR. Pratik Mathur, a 2007 IFS officer and deputy secretary (PMO), will join as a counsellor.

While the mission is headed by T S Tirumurti and has Nagaraj Naidu as DPR, the two officers will join the group before the 75th UN General Assembly opens on September 15,2020. Preparatory work for new non-permanent members begins months before they formally join the UNSC.

Ravindran served in the office of the Indian permanent representative to the UN under Hardeep Singh Puri, now minister of civil aviation, urban development and commerce, who headed the mission when India was a non-permanent member in 2011-2012. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already spelled out India’s approach at the UNSC by spelling out a 5S approach -- Samman (respect), Samvad (dialogue), Sahyog (cooperation) , Shanti (global peace) and Samiriddhi (global prosperity) -- with the overall objective of a “New Orientation of a Reformed Multilateral System.”

While India got 184 out of 192 valid votes cast for the UNSC seat, the vote numbers surprised New Delhi as India’s adversaries, particularly Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysai and backed by Islamabad’s all-weather friend Chinam had spread negativity about the revocation of article 370 in Kashmir on August 5 last year.

“Our understanding is that India got these many votes as its forces stood up to China at Galwan in East Ladakh in June. Although only 129 votes are required, India got additional votes for having the capacity to fight for its territory,” said a senior government official.

It was a reference to the violent brawl that took place in Galwan on June 15 in which heavily outnumbered Indian soldiers fought back against Chinese troops. India lost 20 men in the skirmish and China suffered an unspecified number of casualties.

From conversations with a bunch of diplomats, it is quite evident that India is set to play a constructive role at the UNSC without forgetting that it is still waiting to become a permanent member of the Council after 75 years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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