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New Delhi has responded after the Turkish president called for dialogue under the UN Charter and other resolutions Image Source: @BharatKaDevansh India on Tuesday rejected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s reference to India's Kashmir at the United Nations General Assembly, saying the issue concerns the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and does not admit intervention by an external party. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said India opposed the “unwarranted references” to the country and the Indian-administered Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir made during Erdoğan’s address in New York. “No external party has any locus standi on this issue,” Jaiswal said at a regular media briefing, using a legal expression meaning that an outside party has no standing in the matter.  Erdoğan raised Kashmir during his September 22 address to the General Assembly, saying disputes in South Asia, including the Kashmir issue, should be addressed through dialog...

BJP leader Smriti Irani challenged the demand to restore 133 million names, arguing that voter-roll revision identified deceased, relocated and duplicate electors File Photo: @smritiirani on X The Bharatiya Janata Party's national general secretary Smriti Irani on Tuesday accused the Congress of attacking India’s Election Commission rather than examining its electoral defeats. This comes as she mounts the ruling party’s principal response to opposition demands for the removal of the country’s chief election official. Irani, a former Union Minister, was responding to a resolution adopted by the Congress Working Committee earlier in the day demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the suspension of the nationwide Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and the restoration of 13.3 crore, or 133 million, names that the party said had been removed. She rejected the Congress’s contention that the revision amounted to mass disenfranchisement, and argue...

Defence minister says the navy is escorting Indian-flagged gas tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, and that recent warships are more than 75 per cent Indian-built Image Source: @rajnathsingh on X India will induct or commission 18 warships during 2026, the largest single-year addition in the history of its navy, the defence minister said on Tuesday. Rajnath Singh, addressing the second Indian Navy Commanders' Conference of the year in New Delhi, described 2026 as a historic year for the service and said the scale of the expansion reflected the maturing of India's domestic shipbuilding industry. Warships commissioned recently contain more than 75 per cent Indian-made content, he said, adding that India should now aim to export warships to friendly countries rather than only meet its own requirements. The expansion comes as the navy carries an unusually heavy operational burden in the Gulf. Singh said the safe passage of Indian-flagged merchant ships, particularly liquefied ...

India's grand old party's highest decision-making body calls for restoration of 13.3 crore names, days after a newspaper investigation reported dissent inside the Election Commission Image Source: INCIndia on X India's main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, has demanded the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner and the immediate suspension of a nationwide revision of electoral rolls, in a resolution passed by its highest decision-making body. The Congress Working Committee, meeting at the party's headquarters in New Delhi on Tuesday, also called for the restoration of 13 crore 30 lakh names, more than 130 million, which it said had been removed from the rolls through the Special Intensive Revision. The resolution follows an investigation published by The Indian Express last week reporting that two of the three members of the Election Commission had formally objected on record at least 14 times over ten months to decisions taken without their kn...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 7 Of 15 File Photo Via: @JDMahama on X Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama told the UN General Assembly that Africa's lack of a permanent seat on the Security Council is "fundamentally unacceptable in the 21st century", and warned of "a dangerous drift toward unilateralism, lawlessness, and the erosion of multilateral norms". Addressing the General Debate on Thursday, September 24, Mahama argued that past injustices remain built into today's power structures. "Africa is home to 1.5 billion people, over 18 per cent of humanity, and constitutes the largest regional voting bloc in this General Assembly. Yet, Africa remains without a single permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council," he said. "We cannot credibly champion the sovereign equality of nations while preserving a global governance structure designed for the post-war geopolitical realities," he continued. "Security Counc...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 6 Of 15 File Photo Via: @RonaldLamola on X South Africa told the UN General Assembly that economic coercion and Africa's exclusion from global decision-making are eroding trust in the multilateral system, and demanded permanent African seats on the Security Council "with all the prerogatives of permanent membership". Ronald Lamola, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, delivered the national statement on Thursday, September 24, which is Heritage Day in South Africa. He opened by recalling that 60 years ago the Assembly condemned apartheid as a crime against humanity, calling apartheid's fall "a glorious story that attests to what multilateralism can deliver". That history framed what followed. South Africa, he said, had built "a democracy strong enough to withstand and resist attempts at external supervision and tutelage". He did not say from where such attempts came. On coercion he was direc...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 5 Of 15 File Photo Via: @drpezeshkian on X Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the UN General Assembly that his country would not yield to military pressure or sanctions, and accused the United States and Israel of benefiting from a double standard the international system has failed to confront. He spoke on Wednesday, September 23, a day after US President Donald Trump told the same Assembly he was weighing a deal with Tehran against "annihilating" Iran. Pezeshkian said he had planned different remarks before hearing Trump. "Iran must be understood by Mr. Trump, and those who seek to bully us," he said. "We are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force." The speech was delivered in wartime. The United States and Israel began their war on Iran in February, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an airstrike on Tehran. A 60-day ceasefire agreed in April b...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 4 Of 15 Image Source: @sanchezcastejon on X Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for the abolition of the Security Council veto at the 81st UN General Assembly, placing Madrid among a small number of Western governments backing one of the Global South's longest-standing demands for reform. "We must reform the Security Council. So that all regions of the world are fairly represented. And to put an end to the permanent members' right of veto," Sánchez said in his address on Wednesday, September 23. "Because, as the United Nations Charter states, no country should be both judge and party at the same time. However powerful it may be." He opened with a statement of purpose. "I take the floor here with a single aim, and that is to defend what many are trying to destroy," he said, referring to principles that "various governments, represented here, either scorn or seek to dismantle". He did not...

Indian foreign minister closed UN high-level week with a talk at the Asia Society, setting out five arguments about global turbulence Image Source: @DrSJaishankar on X India's external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, said the emergence of a multipolar world is inevitable, in remarks at the Asia Society in New York at the close of the United Nations General Assembly's high-level week. He set out five arguments in the discussion, which he described in a post on X after the event, thanking Daniel Russel of the Asia Society for the conversation. The first was the difficult state of the world, marked by multiple conflicts and by what he calls the 4F crisis, in food, fuel, fertiliser and finance. The second was what he termed the paradox of obsessive competition alongside deep interdependence. The third was that the indivisibility of the global landscape requires a cohesive outlook. The fourth concerned the multiple causes of current turbulence, and the fifth the inevitability of m...