India to hold G-20 meetings in Ladakh

A few days after China and Pakistan voiced their opposition to India’s decision to hold a meeting to prepare for the G-20 Summit in Jammu and Kashmir next year, the center had proposed to hold this meeting in the Union Ladakh region as well.

Indian and Chinese troops have been involved in border deadlock in East Ladakh since May 2020, and government proposals to hold meetings in the Union region are likely to be seen as insult to China.

India assumed the G-20 presidency on December 1 this year. Minister of External Affairs S Jaisankar will reach Bali in Indonesia to participate in the meeting of the G-20 Foreign Minister on July 7 and 8.

Governor Ladakh RK Mathur has cleaned the nomination of the commissioners of the Sauatat Biswas and Leh-Kargil Range Division Dig Junaid Mehmood as a nodal officer to coordinate with the Ministry of External Affairs, which accommodates the G-20 Secretariat.

The J&K government on June 23 was a committee of five members led by the main secretary, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to coordinate the G-20 meeting which will be held at UT.

Indian proposal to hold a meeting to prepare international groupings in 2023 at J&K has invited a sharp reaction from Pakistan, which said that they hope that group members will fully realize the necessity of law and justice and oppose the proposal directly.

China then voiced its opposition to the steps of the Indian government, saying “relevant parties must avoid complicating the situation with a unilateral step”.

This will be the first major international meeting held in the previous state since August 2019, when the J&K was stripped from a special status and divided into the J&K and Ladakh union.

G-20 unites the world’s main economy and has US, British, Argentine, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, German, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexican, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, South Korea and Turkey, besides the European Union.