India not getting a permanent UNSC seat 'not good' for the global body: Jaishankar

New Delhi, Sep 22: External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar on Wednesday said at Columbia University that India not sitting as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) is not good for the country and also not good for the global body.

"I was serious when I said I'm working on it," Jaishankar said. He was responding to a question on how long it will take for India to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Jaishankar made the remarks in conversation with Arvind Panagariya, Professor at Columbia University and former vice chairman of NITI Aayog.

The EAM also underlined that transformation of the UNSC is long overdue. "We believe that transformation is overdue because the UN is a product that was devised eighty years ago. And 80 years ago by any standards of human creativity is a long time ago. The number of independent countries have quadrupled in that period," EAM Jaishankar said.

He also said that there are big parts of the world which are not parts of the global body.

The EAM underlined that within a few years, India will be the third largest economy in the world, and the most populous society in the world.

On support for India at UNSC, the EAM said, "I do believe that with each passing year, I sense in the world a greater and greater support for India to be there because we do command today the confidence and trust of very large parts of the world. I do not want to compare it with the current P5. But I would at least say a lot of countries perhaps think that we speak for them with a high degree of empathy and accuracy."