India's G20 presidency reaches landmark in run-up to summit

India on Monday reached the milestone of hosting 100 meetings in the run-up to the 18th summit of the G20, although its presidency over the premier forum for international economic cooperation came under the shadow of the geopolitical tension triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

New Delhi remained firm on its plan to hold a meeting of the G20 tourism working group in Srinagar from May 22 to 24, brushing aside protests from Islamabad over its plan to hold the meet despite India-Pakistan territorial dispute over Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). A source in New Delhi said on Monday that the government also had plan to hold a Youth 20 or Y20 meeting – a side event of the G20 process – on April 26-28 in Leh, even as the three-year-long stand-off between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in eastern Ladakh could not be resolved yet.

New Delhi had last month also hosted a part of the meeting of the G20 Research and Innovation initiative in Itanagar, the capital of Arunachal Pradesh, despite China’s claim over an area of 90000 square kilometers in the frontier state of India.

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The meeting of the Chief Agricultural Scientists of the G20 nations being held in Varanasi marked the 100th meeting of the forum after India formally took over the presidency for the bloc from Indonesia on December 1 last year. The second meetings of the G20 Health Working Group and the Digital Economy Working Group as well as the precursor meeting of the space economy leaders were also held, respectively in Goa, Hyderabad and Shillong, on Monday.

The G20 secretariat in New Delhi on Monday said that India had so far hosted 100 meetings in as many as 41 cities across 28 States and Union Territories of India in the run-up to the forum’s 18th summit, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi would host on September 9 and 10. With over 12300 delegates from 110 nationalities attending meetings so far, India’s G20 presidency already saw the largest in-person participation. The Modi Government would also host 100 more meetings over the next few months taking the total number of G20 meetings to 200.

Two G20 ministerial conclaves – the meeting of the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in Bengaluru from February 24-25 and the meeting of the Foreign Ministers in New Delhi on March 2 – failed to reach a consensus on a joint communiqué as Russia and China disagreed with the United States and the other western nations on paragraphs condemning the former Soviet Union nation’s “special military operations” in Ukraine. New Delhi, being the chair of the G20, finally, issued the "chair's summary" of discussions on both the occasions, noting that the paras on the Russia-Ukraine conflict were not endorsed by Moscow and Beijing.

But the G20 secretariat in New Delhi on Monday pointed it out that the premium forum for international economic cooperation had agreed to set up an expert group on reforms of the multilateral development banks and debt treatment in the meeting of the Finance Ministers and the Central Board Governors in Bengaluru and reached consensus on multilateral reforms, development cooperation, food and energy security, counter-terrorism, new and emerging threats, global skill mapping and disaster risk reduction in the Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi.