G20 summit: Shashi Tharoor congratulates Indian emissary Amitabh Kant on bringing consensus

Amitabh Kant, the Indian emissary at the G20 and the country’s G20 sherpa, is also prolific on social media, tweeting several times a day. And endorsing him today is another prominent Indian public figure, Shashi Tharoor, a Congress leader and a veteran on social media.

According to Kant, “The most complex part of the entire #G20 was to bring consensus on the geopolitical paras (Russia-Ukraine). This was done over 200 hours of non-stop negotiations, 300 bilateral meetings, 15 drafts. In this, I was greatly assisted by two brilliant officers - @NagNaidu08 & @eenamg," Kant wrote on X.

Kant, a 1980-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer from the Kerala cadre, has had a colourful innings in recent years. He is credited with coining the slogan, ‘Kerala: God’s Own Country', which became hugely popular a few years ago and brought in hundreds of thousands of tourists from around the globe to the southern Indian state.

During his younger days, Kant studied in Delhi for many years. “When I joined JNU, I found myself on the same floor of the same hostel in JNU, at which Mr Jaishankar was,” he said recently, referring to his long association with the Indian foreign minister, S. Jaishankar. “In the midst of all mediocre like me — the floor was full of mediocre — Mr. Jaishankar was the only bright, brilliant intellectual. He was a star then, and a star now. He was inspiring many of us.”

• Watch: PM Modi, President Biden, other leaders pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi during G20 Summit