Inter-ministerial Secretaries to finalise calendar for G20 meetings on August 17

According to sources, India’s G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant has called an inter-ministerial meeting of around 20 Secretaries on August 17. The meeting is expected to be attended by Secretaries from the key ministries and departments, officials from Lok Sabha Secretariat, and Comptroller and Auditor General, sources said.

The sources said that among the Secretaries who have been asked to attend the meeting are —Ajay Seth (Economic Affairs), S Radha Chauhan (DoPT), Manoj Ahuja (Agriculture), Govind Mohan (Culture), Alkesh Kumar Sharma (Electronics and IT), Kamal Kishore (NDMA), Sunil Barthwal (Labour), Leena Nandan (Environment), K Sanjay Murthy (Higher Education), Alok Kumar (Power), Rajesh Bhushan (Health), BVR Subramanyam (Commerce), Arvind Singh (Tourism), Indevar Pandey (Women and Child Development), Anurag Jain (DPIIT), Dr Srivari Chandrasekhar (Science & Technology), S Somnath (Space), Manoj Joshi (Housing & Urban Affairs), and Sanjay Kumar (Youth Affairs).

These Secretaries are heading separate working groups on issues ranging from anti-corruption to agriculture, and from culture to digital economy, sources said.

With less than four months remaining for India to assume the G-20 Presidency, finalising the G-20 meeting calendar spread across 53 cities is of critical importance to ensure logistics arrangements such as venues, hotel rooms, and detailed programme of each meeting, said a source.

The source said, the G-20 Sherpa has desired that the calendar should be “fully finalised” on or before August 17, 2022.

The move is significant as the Prime Minister had urged the Chief Ministers to develop a mass movement around the G-20 at a meeting of the NITI Aayog Governing Council last week.

“The PM said we should develop a mass movement around G20,” said a statement issued by the NITI Aayog after the meeting on Sunday. “The PM also spoke about India’s G20 Presidency in 2023 and called it a unique opportunity to show the world that India is not just Delhi—it is every state and Union Territory of the country,” the statement said.

“This will allow us to identify the best talent available in the country. He also said there should be a dedicated team for G20 in the states to derive the maximum possible benefit from this initiative,” the statement said.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who gave a presentation to NITI Governing Council on the upcoming G-20 meeting, said that the presidency presents a “great opportunity and a great responsibility”.