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The foreign ministers of India and Canada met in New Delhi on Wednesday to discuss defence, energy and a trade agreement both governments want concluded this year, three years after an assassination allegation reduced relations between the two countries to their lowest point in decades. Image Via: @DrSJaishankar on X EAM S Jaishankar and Anita Anand reviewed what India’s foreign ministry described as efforts to strengthen bilateral relations across the India-Canada strategic partnership. The two had a detailed exchange on security and defence cooperation and on expanding energy cooperation, the ministry said, and discussed trade, education, science and technology, people-to-people ties and cooperation in multilateral bodies. They welcomed progress towards an early conclusion of negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and said the momentum in high-level contacts should be translated into tangible outcomes. Anand also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who d...

India's Leader of the Opposition climbed a police barricade on Parliament Street on Tuesday with the national flag in hand and got a hundred metres near the Election Commission but he could not reach it. What happened in those hundred metres and what is happening now will be read one way in Delhi and quite another abroad Representational Image Via: INCIndia Let us discuss the facts first. Opposition MPs gathered at Makar Dwar, a gate of India's Parliament House, and set off for Nirvachan Sadan, a walk of roughly a kilometre. Rahul Gandhi later said more than 300 members of both Houses had joined while some from the other side refuted the figure. Security personnel stopped them in front of the NITI Aayog building. Police said no permission had been given. Barricades went up, buses were already waiting when detentions began. Among those taken away, reportedly, were Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, Abhishek Banerjee and Derek O'Brien of the Trinamool Congress and the C...

Prime Minister Modi called it a productive conversation, a day after India's foreign minister said the two sides had reached broad understanding on a trade pact File Photo: @BohuslavskaKate on X Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to POTUS Donald Trump by telephone on Wednesday. The two leaders reviewed cooperation across trade, defence, energy and critical technologies, the Indian prime minister said. "Had a productive conversation with President Trump," Modi wrote on X. "We reviewed our bilateral cooperation in trade, defence, energy, critical technologies and other areas. We agreed to maintain close engagement to take our Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership forward." The two leaders also exchanged views on regional and international issues, he said, including efforts to advance global peace and security. The White House had not published its own account of the call at the time of writing. The conversation comes a day after India's externa...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 9 Of 15 Image Source: @DrSJaishankar on X India told the UN General Assembly that the international order built after 1945 is giving way, and that the world is moving towards multipolarity whether its institutions are ready or not. "We are now well on our way towards a multi-polar world. The post-1945 order is giving way to new realities," External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in India's national statement on Saturday, September 26. "This process of adjustment, accommodation and acceptance will not be easy. Much of the turbulence that we witness today emanates from those very difficulties." The passage captured a long-held view in New Delhi that new centres of power are not in themselves the problem but institutions that have failed to adjust to them are. The inability of global institutions to keep the peace, Jaishankar said, was "not only weakening security, but is also threatening progress, slowing the pace...

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...

Jaishankar told the General Assembly that Bharat's right to self-defence against terrorism 'will be exercised', in a speech that also put the Gulf shipping crisis at the centre of India's case for a reordered world Screengrab of UN address; Via: @sidhant on X India's external affairs minister warned the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday that his country would exercise its right to defend itself against terrorism, and that existing understandings with a neighbour he did not name could be reopened. "Yesterday, a serial practitioner of terrorism misrepresented facts before this Assembly," S Jaishankar told the general debate at the assembly's 81st session in New York. Arguments had been invoked, he said, to normalise terrorism and claim immunity from its consequences. "That will not stand." He did not name Pakistan, whose prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, had addressed the assembly the previous day. But the reference was unmistakable, ...

 The 15-nation Caribbean Community has decided to support India's candidature for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 2028-29 term, India's foreign ministry said, in the clearest outcome yet from a week of Global South diplomacy at the UN General Assembly. The decision was conveyed at the India-CARICOM foreign ministers' meeting in New York on 23 September, held on the margins of the assembly's 81st session. India's external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, co-chaired it with Melvin Bouva, Suriname's minister of foreign affairs, international business and cooperation. Jaishankar thanked the group and said India would be a strong voice of the Global South. Image Source: @DrSJaishankar Foreign ministers from Barbados, Dominica, the Bahamas, Guyana, Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Haiti, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, and Antigua and Barbuda attended, along with Grenada's finance minister, a ...

India, the European Union and five other initial co-sponsors issued a joint declaration on Monday pledging to strengthen international cooperation and reform multilateral institutions as they warned of growing conflict, polarisation and pressure on international law. The declaration, titled A Joint Commitment to Multilateralism, International Law, Peace and Prosperity , names Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, India and Kenya as its initial co-sponsors. It commits the signatories to work together on peace, sustainable development, human rights and shared prosperity. Image from UNHighLevelWeek: Via: @DrSJaishankar The signatories expressed concern about violations of international law and the increasing use of coercion, protectionism and threats or force. They also warned that economic interdependence was being used as a source of leverage, disrupting trade, supply chains, investment and development finance. The declaration did not name any country in connecti...

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar joined the inaugural Partners for Multilateralism, International Law, Peace and Prosperity summit in New York during a series of meetings on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly. Image via: @DrSJaishankar In the first meeting of the Visegrad Group and India in a foreign ministers’ format, the two sides agreed to hold annual meetings of their foreign ministers and an annual business forum, Jaishankar said. He also listed plans for closer cooperation in technology, research, education and defence, as well as cultural exchanges and support for multilateralism. The Visegrad Group comprises Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.  After that meeting, Jaishankar shared a statement by Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár supporting India’s inclusion as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Jaishankar separately said he and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot had discussed Security Council reform, the war...

India's external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, inaugurated a maternal and child hospital and a bridge in eastern Bhutan and laid the foundation stone for a hydropower project in the north of the country on Wednesday, the first day of a two-day official visit. Jaishankar is visiting Bhutan on 16 and 17 September at the invitation of the country's minister of foreign affairs and external trade, DN Dhungyel, according to a statement issued in New Delhi on 16 September. Image Source: @DrSJaishankar on X The statement said Jaishankar would hold bilateral talks with Dhungyel, have a royal audience with Bhutan's king, and call on Bhutan's prime minister. It described the visit as in keeping with the tradition of regular high-level exchanges between the two countries, and as intended to strengthen their close ties of friendship and cooperation. Jaishankar arrived in Paro and was welcomed by Dhungyel, he shared in a post on X. He later met Dhungyel in Bumthang, where the tw...

Donald Trump was not in the room at Bharat Mandapam but he was the reason the room was full.  When the American President threatened 100 percent tariffs on BRICS members who try to replace the dollar, when he increased tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent and added an extra 25 percent as punishment for buying Russian oil, when he threatened an additional 10 percent on countries backing what he called BRICS's anti-American policy, he was deliberately doing something that no amount of Indian diplomacy could have managed on its own. He gave the world's largest alternative multilateral forum the urgency it had been struggling to find. Eleven nations representing nearly half the world's population came to New Delhi partly because the alternative, standing alone before a tariff-wielding, sanction-wielding, dollar-wielding Washington, had become considerably more frightening than sitting in the same room as each other. Image Source: @VikramMisri on X Indian Prime Minister Modi un...

India on March 25 continued to mount a coordinated political, diplomatic and administrative response to the escalating West Asia war, with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar stating he was “ pleased to meet US Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby ” and that they “exchanged views on the current geopolitical scenario,” even as the 18th India–US Defence Policy Group meeting in New Delhi saw both sides “review ongoing initiatives,” identify “priority areas for co-development & co-production of defence equipment,” and “reaffirm commitment to enhancing military-to-military cooperation through joint exercises, training visits & strategic exchanges,” signalling that defence coordination with Washington is also being sharpened alongside the unfolding conflict. A snapshot from U.S.-India Defense Policy Group; Via: USAmbIndia on X The engagement was reinforced at multiple levels, with Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri meeting Colby to discuss “advancing bilateral defenc...

Iran on Saturday used its highest-level engagement with India to sharply frame the ongoing war as “unlawful aggression” by the United States and Israel, with President Masoud Pezeshkian telling Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Iran “did not initiate the war” and that attacks were carried out “without any justification, logic, or legal basis,” even as Modi condemned strikes on energy infrastructure, stressed freedom of navigation, and called for an early return to peace through dialogue. File Photo of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian; Via: ShaykhSulaiman According to an official Iranian readout , Pezeshkian outlined what he described as the “dimensions of the aggression,” alleging that U.S. and Israeli strikes had resulted in the deaths of senior leaders, military commanders and civilians, including “innocent schoolchildren,” and claimed that a U.S. strike on a school in Minab led to the killing of 168 children.  He rejected U.S. assertions that the campaign was aimed...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi  has spoken with at least six global leaders across West Asia, Europe and Southeast Asia over the past 24 hours. This comes at a time when India is intensifying diplomatic push for de-escalation, protection of energy infrastructure, and uninterrupted global trade flows as the Iran war expands into critical economic systems. File Photo of PM NaMo with French Prez Macron; Via: PMO In a series of coordinated calls, Modi engaged with King Abdullah II, Emmanuel Macron, Anwar Ibrahim, and Sultan Haitham bin Tariq, in addition to his earlier outreach to Kuwait’s leadership. This showed India's a multi-vector diplomatic effort aimed at stabilising a conflict now directly threatening energy supply chains and maritime routes. With Jordan’s King Abdullah II , Modi “expressed concern at the evolving situation in West Asia” and “highlighted the need for dialogue and diplomacy for the early restoration of peace, security and stability,” while warning that “at...