The Canadian government’s “continuous interference” in the affairs of India, according to External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, prompted the North American nation to remove 41 of its ambassadors when India demanded diplomatic parity on Sunday.
“There’s this whole issue of parity that the size of how many diplomats there are of one country versus how many diplomats there are of the other country. Parity is very much provided for by the Vienna Convention, which is the relevant international rule on this”, the minister mentioned as quoted by new outlet ANI.
“But in our case, we invoked parity because we had concerns about continuous interference in our affairs by Canadian personnel. We haven’t made much of that public. My sense is over a period of time more stuff will come out and people will understand why we had the kind of discomfort with many of them which we did”, he continued.
Following the announcement by the Justin Trudeau administration that it had summoned back 41 ambassadors, tensions between Canada and India grew. The pullout occurred one day ahead of India’s deadline, after which they risked losing their diplomatic immunity.
In order to achieve “parity” in the size of Canada’s diplomatic mission, New Delhi reduced the number of its stationed personnel from 62 to 21. Trudeau referred to India’s conduct as a breach of the Geneva Convention.
“The Government of India decided to unilaterally revoke the diplomatic immunity of 40 Canadian diplomats in India. This is a violation of the Vienna Convention governing diplomacy…It is something that all countries in the world should be worried about and this is putting aside the allegations we made of a serious violation of international law with the alleged killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil that the Indian government could have been involved in”, Trudeau further stated.
