New Delhi: India’s seven all-party delegations, with MPs and ex-diplomats, including Opposition leaders Shashi Tharoor, Asaduddin Owaisi, Kanimozhi, and Manish Tiwari, will depart for different destinations on Wednesday, as part of the Centre’s diplomatic push in 33 countries post-Operation Sindoor.
The agenda of the delegations, with 59 members in total, is to highlight Pakistan’s role in cross-border terrorism and to ratchet up global pressure against Islamabad while ramping up support for New Delhi.
The Centre has entrusted the delegations with covering separate regions, such as North America, Central America, South America, North Africa, West Africa, South East Asia, East Asia, West Asia, and Europe.
The US, France, the UK, Russia, Germany, and Spain are among the 33 countries that Indian delegations will visit, and Sierra Leone, Congo, and Latvia are some other names that may surprise. Government sources say there is a specific reason for the choice of each of the countries.
The Centre has confined the list of countries to permanent or non-permanent member States of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), States where the United Nations enjoys some presence, and traditional partner States of India in different regions. The delegations will also meet with multilateral organisations—for instance, the European and African unions. Each visit will last roughly two weeks per delegation.
A breakdown of the countries indicates that the delegations will interact with leaders from 12 of the 15 UNSC member States. The only UNSC member States that Indian delegations will not visit include Pakistan and Somalia, two non-permanent members, and China, a permanent member.
Indian delegations will travel to the US, the UK, France, and Russia, the other four UNSC permanent member States, as well as non-permanent UNSC member States such as Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Panama, the Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, and Slovenia.
ThePrint looks at the different countries the delegations will visit.
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Members of UNSC and GCC
The first two groups, led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Baijayant Panda and Ravi Shankar Prasad, respectively, will visit two non-permanent UNSC members—Algeria and Denmark.
Ravi Shankar Prasad’s group will visit Germany, France, the UK, and Brussels, where it will reach out to the European Union.
Baijayant Panda’s group will visit Saudi Arabia, the country where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on a visit when the 22 April terrorist attack in Kashmir’s Pahalgam took place. The other countries are the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, Kuwait and Bahrain.
The GCC, which includes all Muslim-majority nations, for the most part, had called for a de-escalation between India and Pakistan.
India has been making a serious outreach to the GCC, with Modi visiting Kuwait in December 2024 before his one-day visit to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in the past month.
The third group, led by Janata Dal (United)’s Sanjay Kumar Jha, will travel to South East and West, covering the Republic of Korea, another UNSC member, and stopping in Japan, India’s QUAD partner, besides visiting Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Ties between India and Indonesia have grown in strength in the last few years, with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto becoming the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations in India earlier this year. Malaysia is the chair of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the East Asia Summit will be in Kuala Lumpur later this year.
Notably, Modi, as part of his diplomatic outreach, has made it a point to travel to the ASEAN nations nearly every year for the ASEAN-India Summit, or the East Asia Summit.
Led by Shrikant Eknath Shinde, the fourth group will reach the UAE Wednesday before going to West Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Sierra Leone is a non-permanent member of the UNSC.
Between 2000 and 2001, 4,000 Indian troops in Sierra Leone were part of the UNAMSIL, United Nations Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone. In August 2020, India also opened its resident mission in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri once briefed the envoys of the UNSC member States on Operation Sindoor in New Delhi, after inviting the ambassadors of most of them, except China, Pakistan, and Somalia.
No representative from Sierra Leone was present then, given that the West African nation has no resident mission in New Delhi.
The fifth and sixth groups, led by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Kanimozhi, will travel to North and South America, besides Europe and Russia. The group will cover the US, Panama, Guyana, Brazil, and Colombia.
Panama and Guyana are non-permanent UNSC members. Modi, in November 2024, visited Guyana, where the Indian community is significant. In South America, Brazil remains a close partner for India.
The Kanimozhi-led group, other than visiting Spain, will also be travelling to UNSC non-permanent members, Greece and Slovenia, and a UNSC permanent member, Russia. Her group will also visit Latvia, where India opened its mission in July 2024 in Riga, the Latvian capital. It is one of the newest missions launched by India in Europe.
Led by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Supriya Sule, the final or seventh group will visit Qatar, another GCC member, besides Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa. Ethiopia is the headquarters of the African Union (AU). South Africa is the largest economy on the continent, and a partner of India in BRICS, which includes Russia, Brazil, and China.
Indian presence in UN Missions
Led by Shiv Sena’s Shrikant Eknath Shinde, the fourth group will visit three of the countries in Africa—Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Liberia—where the respective UN peacekeeping missions have had or still have a significant Indian presence.
Besides the presence of Indian troops in Sierra Leone as part of UNAMSIL, 1,106 Indian troops are currently a part of the UN Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) in the DRC. Another 159 personnel are in the DRC too, making the contingent from India one of the largest in the African country.
Similarly, India participated in UNMIL (United Nations Mission in Liberia), completing its mandate in 2018. In 2007, an all-woman police unit of 125 personnel reached Liberia and remained there till 2016. A contingent from the Indian Army also served in UNMIL. In 2021, India opened its resident mission in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, as New Delhi wished to deepen ties with countries in West Africa.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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