NEW DELHI: India’s goal of becoming a permanent member of the UN security council took a significant step forward. Amid protests from China, Russia and Pakistan, the UN general assembly on Monday agreed to adopt a negotiating text for security council reforms.

In a statement, India welcomed the decision, saying, “We look forward to early commencement of text-based negotiations with a view to securing concrete outcomes during the 70th session of the UNGA . We call upon all member states to constructively engage in this process so that the long pending reform of the UN security council can be achieved.”

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Describing it as “historic and path-breaking,” India’s UN ambassador Asoke Mukerji told the general assembly that Monday’s decision was significant on three counts — this, he said, was “the first time in the history of the intergovernmental negotiation (IGN) process that a decision on UNSC reform has been adopted through an official document”; this decision sets the IGN process formally on an irreversible text-based negotiations path; and the document is the one circulated on July 31, which would be negotiated on.

In other words, there is a recognized text that has been adopted by the entire assembly, so there is no confusion on which would be the negotiating text. Moreover, the work done in the 69th session will now be carried over into the 70th session, so that will not be lost.

China dismissed the move as “not fair, not transparent”, as did Russia and Pakistan, but none of them could muster up the support to oppose the adoption of the text.

Welcoming the decision, Hardeep Singh Puri, former ambassador to the UN said that it was “a game changing decision made possible by excellent diplomacy by India, including in particular in the final days leading to the adoption of L.92.”

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What this means is that over the next year, the negotiations on the text will continue under the leadership of the Jamaican ambassador Courtenay Rattray to work towards building a global consensus on what the UN security council should be.

The opposition has not gone away — the big powers opposing the negoitations on the UNSC reform may yet resort to a block later on or in the UN security council. But for the foreseeable future, Monday’s decision is a historic one, and could change the future of the UN decisively.

With the adoption, the general assembly decided to "immediately continue intergovernmental negotiations on security council reform in informal plenary of the general assembly at its 70th session, building on the informal meetings held during its 69th session, as well as the positions and proposals made by member states, reflected in the text and its annex circulated by the president of the general assembly in his letter dated July 31, 2015".

Kutesa had informed member states about the draft in a letter dated September 10 to all permanent representatives.

In a letter to all UN members in July, he had circulated the text containing the positions of countries on security council reform and how the UN body should be expanded in its permanent and non-permanent categories.

He also circulated letters containing the positions of groups and member states that indicated they did not wish their proposals to be included in the body of the negotiating text. These countries include the US, Russia and China.

India has maintained that the process to expand the powerful UN body "cannot be seen to be an exercise ad infinitum" and a results-based timeline is crucial to achieve a concrete outcome.