India's UN reform criticism Haq: states control reform

Oct 5

Deepak Arora attributes to India's foreign minister what he describes as the previous day's criticism of the UN's effectiveness and unchanged management despite membership growth, while calling for a better UN rather than abandonment. Haq reiterates Guterres's support for a more representative Security Council, especially permanent African representation, but stresses that member states control Charter amendments and the Secretariat can only encourage reform and warn against inaction. He acknowledges a recent foreign-minister meeting, India's support and BRICS leadership without supplying a detailed readout. In a later return, he again leaves African candidate choices to member states and refers to their General Assembly reform statements. No expanded Council or agreed candidates are announced.

At the fifth Kautilya Economic Conclave in New Delhi on October 5, 2026, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar answers a question about the UN's future. Both DD India's complete conclave report and PTI's directly recorded question and answer carry his diagnosis that the UN and Security Council are gridlocked and inadequately representative, contrasting 51 founding members with nearly four times that number today. In the complete PTI answer he accuses unnamed countries of invoking Africa's interests to obstruct reform while saying Africa has already set out its negotiating position. He qualifies 'irrelevance' as ineffectiveness, stresses that the UN remains necessary and has served the international community, and says it must be fixed with its own cooperation. These are his attributed diagnoses and appeal; no obstructing state, adopted reform, new membership or voting change is established. At the October 5 UN briefing, Deepak Arora paraphrases the same membership, management and necessary-UN argument as remarks by India's foreign minister, but describes them as having occurred 'yesterday'. This relative-day discrepancy remains attributed; the directly recorded appearance and inspected PIB record date the original answer to October 5. Haq's member-led reform response is a separate bounded public response.