Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said on Sunday that India was citing diplomatic parity with Canada and forcing the North American country to withdraw 41 of its diplomats over concerns about “continuous interference” by Canadian personnel in the country’s affairs.
“There’s this whole question of parity, which is the number of diplomats in one country compared to the number of diplomats in the other country. “Parity is largely provided for in the Vienna Convention, the relevant international regulation in this regard,” the minister was quoted as saying by ANI. “But in our case, we invoked parity because we were concerned about Canadian personnel continually interfering in our affairs. We haven’t made much of it public. I have a feeling that as time goes on, more things will come out and people will understand why we made a lot of them feel the same discomfort that we did,” he added. Tensions between India and Canada escalated after the Justin Trudeau government announced that it had recalled 41 diplomats. The withdrawal came a day before India’s deadline, otherwise the country risked losing its diplomatic immunity. New Delhi had sought “parity” in the strength of Canada’s diplomatic presence by reducing the number of people stationed in the country from 62 to 21. Trudeau described India’s actions as a violation of the Geneva Convention. “The Indian government has decided to unilaterally revoke the diplomatic immunity of 40 Canadian diplomats in India. This constitutes a violation of the Vienna Convention Governing Diplomacy… It is something that all countries in the world should be concerned about, and we leave behind the allegations we have made of a serious violation of international law by the alleged killing of a Canadian Citizens aside on Canadian soil in which the Indian government could have been involved,” the Canadian Prime Minister had said.
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