Ruchira Kamboj: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) recently announced that Ruchira Kamboj has been appointed as the next Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations in New York.

Key Highlights:

• Ruchira Kamboj is currently the Indian Envoy to Bhutan.
• She will succeed TS Tirumurti and is expected to take up as India’s Permanent Representative to the UN shortly.

About Ruchira Kamboj:

• She was the All India Women’s topper of the 1987 Civil Services batch and the topper of the 1987 Indian Foreign Service (IFS) batch.
• She had joined the Indian Foreign Service in the same year.
• She began her diplomatic journey in Paris, France, where she was posted as the Third Secretary in the Indian Embassy to France from 1989-91.
• She has been the Permanent Representative of India to UNESCO in Paris, and the Indian High Commissioner in South Africa.
• From 2011-2014 she was the Chief of Protocol in New Delhi.

• She is the first and only woman diplomat so far in the Indian Government to have held this position.

• She was earlier posted as the Counsellor at India’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York from 2002-2005, where she had dealt with a wide range of political issues.
• She has also served in Mauritius, Cape Town in South Africa as India’s Consul General, and at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London.

Role of India’s Permanent Representative to UN:

• The Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations (UN) is the head of a country's diplomatic mission to the United Nations.
• The role of India’s Permanent Representative to UN is to represent the country in the global body on various issues.