India issued a sharp retort to Pakistan after the latter raised the issue of Kashmir in the United Nations, calling it a “failed state” that “survives on international handouts”.
Indian diplomat Kshitij Tyagi drew attention at the seventh meeting of the 58th Session of the UN Human Rights Council after he blasted Pakistan and said that the country is in no position to lecture anyone since its state policies are constituted by “human rights abuses, persecution of minorities and systematic erosion of democratic values”.
Who is Kshitij Tyagi?
Kshitij Tyagi, who tore through Pakistan in Geneva, is an engineer-turned-diplomat. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, before pursuing an MTech in thermal energy and environment engineering from the same institute.
He then joined Jones Lang LaSalle, a real-estate company, as a business analyst and worked there for almost three years, from 2007 to 2020. His stint with the Indian Government started in April 2010 when he joined the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy as a scientist. He worked there for over two years before clearing the Indian civil services exam, one of the country’s toughest, in 2012.
After undergoing training as an Indian Foreign Service officer at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Tyagi joined the Foreign Service institute in Delhi and kickstarted his journey as an Indian diplomat.
His first posting as Third Secretary in the Indian Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal, came in June 2014, where he served for a year and seven months. He then joined the Indian Embassy in Brazil as Second Secretary in December 2015 and was then promoted as India’s First Secretary in Egypt in 2018.
It was just last year, in January 2024, that Tyagi joined the Permanent Mission of India to the UN as First Secretary. Within a year, in January 2025, he was promoted as Counsellor at the mission.
What did Kshitij Tyagi say at UN?
Attacking Pakistan after it raised the issue of Jammu and Kashmir in the UN, Tyagi said, “It is regrettable to see Pakistan’s so-called leaders and delegates continuing to dutifully spread falsehoods handed down by its military terrorist complex.”
He added that Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh were, and will always be, an integral and “inalienable” part of India. “The unprecedented political, social and economic progress in J&K in the past few years speaks for itself. These successes are a testament to the people’s trust in the government’s commitment to bring normalcy to a region scarred by decades of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism,” Tyagi said.
He also asked Pakistan to get over its “unhealthy obsession with India” and should focus on “providing actual governance and justice to its own people.”