2 November 2013
UNITED NATION: India's crucial win in an election to the UN audit body is ample demonstration that it is time for the country to sit at the UN Security Council high table and the global community can no longer behave like "ostriches in sand", India's envoy to the UN has said.
India yesterday won an election to the UN Board of Auditors with its nominee Comptroller and Auditor General Shashikant Sharma garnering the maximum number of votes.
Sharma obtained 124 votes out of 186 ballots cast in the election held in the General Assembly's Fifth Committee on Administrative and Budgetary questions.
The win is a "recognition of India's institutional depth. We look forward to a very productive tenure on the board," India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Asoke Mukerji told PTI.
Mukerji said apart from experience in traditional audit, India will bring to the table expertise in newer areas like environmental audit, business systems and IT audit.
Impact of India's expertise in these areas will now be felt on the global scene, he added.
Mukerji said India's winning streak in crucial UN elections demonstrates that India should now actually be sitting at the UN Security Council high table.
"It is a message that others who have a reason to doubt to see and understand that they cannot keep an idea, whose time has come, away from them forever. They cannot be ostriches in the sand," he said.
Separately, for the membership of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), Devesh Uttam, First Secretary, Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations was elected by acclamation.
India has had a successful track record of winning seats at key UN bodies in the past few years.
It was elected to the United Nations' Joint Inspection Unit in 2011, defeating China in a direct fight for the lone seat from the Asia-Pacific region.
India had also won seats in bodies like the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, ECOSOC, Human Rights Council and the International Law Commission.
Last year Senior Supreme court judge Dalveer Bhandari was elected to the International Court of Justice, winning an overwhelming number of votes in the General Assembly and Security Council election which brought India back to the UN's principal judicial organ after a gap of two decades.
Published by : The Economic Times