India’s 30-year wait for a seat has a new twist and an old problem

India's three-decade-old bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) got fresh European backing this week, even as it remains without a negotiating text at the UN.

Speaking after the first Visegrad Group (V4)+India Foreign Ministers' Meeting in New York on September 22, Slovakia's Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar said, "We all agree as V4 countries that India, as a part of the Global South country, an upcoming superpower in the Indo-Pacific region, must be at the table as the permanent member of the UN Security Council.” The V4 comprises Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia.

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The remarks came days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told BRICS leaders in New Delhi on September 12 that "reform of the UN Security Council can no longer be delayed. The text-based negotiations on this issue must be linked to a clearly defined timeline and concrete outcomes."

The questions that remain unsettled go well beyond India's own claim, said Rajeesh Kumar, Research Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). "The bigger questions are: Who gets permanent seats? How many new seats should there be? How should they be distributed among regions? And how should competing regional claims be handled?" he said.

The assessment comes as India campaigns for a ninth two-year term as an elected member of the Council for 2028-29, under the theme SHANTI, with the vote due in the UN General Assembly in June 2027.

How the Council is structured

The Security Council has 15 members. Five are permanent: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China, together known as the P5. Each holds a veto, meaning any one of them can block a Council resolution. The other ten seats are filled by elections in the General Assembly, with members serving two-year terms. Elected members do not hold a veto; they vote on resolutions but cannot block one on their own.

Under Article 108 of the UN Charter, any change to the Council's composition requires an amendment adopted by two-thirds of the General Assembly and ratified by two-thirds of the member states, including all five permanent members.

The Council has been expanded only once, in 1965, when the number of elected seats rose from six to ten, India's Permanent Representative to the UN, P Harish noted at the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) on Council reform on April 14, 2026.

How the reform process has moved

India was among the Non-Aligned countries that initiated a 1992 General Assembly draft resolution on equitable representation in the Council, according to a 2017 paper by Rajeesh Kumar in the journal Strategic Analysis. The Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN), the General Assembly forum set up specifically to discuss reform, began in 2009.

The closest the process has come to a working document was in 2015, when the General Assembly adopted a decision that placed on record a framework document compiling member states' positions on reform.

Asoke Kumar Mukerji, then India's Permanent Representative, described it at the time as the first formal document of its kind in the IGN.

Text-based negotiations, which India and its G4 partners Brazil, Germany and Japan, a group of countries that support each other's bids for permanent seats, have sought, have not yet begun.

"The problem is that reform has never moved from the General Assembly negotiations to an agreed reform text that can lead to a Charter amendment," Rajeesh Kumar said.

Also read: 'Taken note of relevant reports: China on India's bid for non-permanent UNSC seat

Ambassador TS Tirumurti, India's Permanent Representative to the UN during the 2021-22 term, described the IGN in a 2023 Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) paper as the only UN process that runs without a deadline, without a text and without a record of progress.

Where the permanent members stand

Four of the five permanent members, the US, the UK, France and Russia, have publicly supported India's candidature for a permanent seat.

China's stated position, set out in the India-China joint communiqué of December 16, 2010 and repeated in the recent BRICS New Delhi Declaration on September 12, is that it "understands and supports India's aspiration to play a greater role in the United Nations, including in the Security Council".

The declaration also backed comprehensive reform of the UN, including the Council, and said the reform "is to lead to the amplified voice of the Global South".

Rajeesh Kumar said Western support is genuine but not enough on its own. "The US, UK and France also support Japan, Germany and broader UNSC expansion," he said.

China, he said, offers "support for reform without committing to a particular model". He added: "But even if China says yes, reform may still not happen."

Dilip Sinha, former Permanent Representative of India to the UN in Geneva, said the veto is the point on which the five agree. "None in the P5 wants the veto to be diluted or given to new permanent members, and reform without touching the veto will be meaningless. Various suggestions have been made by countries to placate the P5 on the veto, with no success," he said.

Harsh V Pant, Vice President for Studies and Foreign Policy at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), said the need for P5 consent is built into the Council's structure. "You need the concurrence of the five of the P5 to reform the institution. Powerful countries don't give up their power that easily," he said.

Why the talks are stuck

Tirumurti told ET Online the permanent category will not be opened for one country alone. Any expansion, he said, will be a package that also covers Africa, Latin America and other aspirants.

Ambassador Anil Trigunayat, a former Indian diplomat, said the Council's own standing is at stake. "At 80, the UN is finding itself more and more helpless and teetering towards irrelevance," he said. "India, given its credentials, not being on the horseshoe table is criminal neglect and must be addressed as soon as possible."

Within the IGN, a group of countries known as Uniting for Consensus, informally called the Coffee Club, opposes adding new permanent seats and instead favours longer-term elected seats.

Its membership, Rajeesh Kumar noted, is shaped by regional rivalries. "It includes regional rivals of the G4: Pakistan for India, South Korea for Japan, Italy and Spain for Germany, and Argentina for Brazil. So the deadlock is not simply India versus China. It is also within regions," he said.

Tirumurti said the group's position is that negotiations should not begin until there is consensus on reform, which in practice gives it a hold over the process. Countries that believe they will not get a permanent seat, or that do not want a neighbour to get one, tend to gravitate to the group, he said, and the result is that even a document for discussion has been blocked. "Only if there is a document can you negotiate," he said.

The G4 veto proposal

The G4proposal dates back to a 2005 draft resolution in the General Assembly. It called for six new permanent seats, two each for Asia and Africa and one each for Western Europe and Latin America, plus four new elected seats. New permanent members would not use the veto until a review 15 years after the reform.

India restated this at the IGN on April 14, 2026. Harish said India agreed with the G4 proposal, presented by Brazil, for a 15-year deferral. "Expanding the permanent category with veto is critical to real reform of the Security Council," he said.

A separate class of permanent members without veto rights, he added, "would complicate an already existing discussion that involves wide-ranging views".

Africa's common position

The African Group, with 54 members, is the largest regional bloc in the General Assembly, so its votes count heavily towards the two-thirds majority any reform needs. The African Group, with 54 members, is one of the largest regional blocs in the General Assembly, alongside the Asia-Pacific Group, so its votes count heavily towards the two-thirds majority any reform needs.

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The African Union's common position, the 2005 Ezulwini Consensus, calls for "not less than two permanent seats with all the prerogatives and privileges of permanent membership including the right of veto" and five non-permanent seats for Africa, with the AU itself choosing which countries fill them.

Sinha said the G4's 2005 push ended on this question. "The G4 withdrew its resolution in the GA because it was unable to get Africa's support," he said. "The G4 had offered two permanent seats in 2005, but the African Group wanted more. The Group is unable to reach consensus on which members to recommend for the permanent seat."

India's record as an elected member

Separately from the reform process, India continues to seek elected terms—the two-year non-permanent seats on the Council. For 2021-22, it was elected with 184 votes in the 193-member General Assembly, including all 55 votes of the Asia-Pacific Group, Rajeesh Kumar noted in a 2022 MP-IDSA commentary. Across its eight terms since 1950-51, India voted in favour of more than 90 per cent of resolutions adopted by consensus, the paper found.

India is the second-largest contributor of troops and police to UN peacekeeping as of May 2026, behind Nepal, and the largest on military personnel alone, according to an ANI report.

India has sent more than 260,000 personnel to peacekeeping over six decades, and 177 Indian peacekeepers have died on duty, the highest of any contributing country, Tirumurti's ICWA paper noted.

The way ahead

For India, the immediate challenge is therefore less about winning another endorsement than about getting the reform process onto a negotiating text.

Rajeesh Kumar said the campaign should go on. "Symbolism matters in international politics. Continuing the campaign keeps UNSC reform on the agenda, builds coalitions and creates pressure for change. Political conditions can also change," he said.

"I have zero doubt that India will become a permanent member whenever it is opened up," Tirumurti said.