Ronen Sen, Nirupam Sen

Washington, Feb. 23: The two Sens who are at the apex of the Indian diplomatic hierarchy have been asked by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to stay put in their jobs for another year.

India’s ambassador to Washington, Ronen Sen, who had begun packing his bags to leave for New Delhi on April 1, will continue to head the mission here till the end of March next year.

So will Nirupam Sen, India’s permanent representative to the UN in New York.

Orders extending the tenures of these two top diplomats will be issued by South Block on Monday, but the Prime Minister is understood to have cleared the decks on Thursday.

New York and Washington are among the most critical Indian diplomatic postings abroad.

Ronen Sen had told decision-makers in New Delhi a few weeks ago that he did not want to continue in the US after his present term expired at the end of March.

He had scheduled a final farewell reception at his residence on March 12.

The ministry of external affairs had initiated paperwork on moving Satyabrata Pal, India’s high commissioner in Islamabad, to Washington to succeed Ronen Sen. But the political leadership in New Delhi has now persuaded him to stay on for one more year.

This will be the third extension for Ronen Sen and Nirupam Sen in their respective missions.

Nirupam Sen got his first extension shortly before he was due to retire from the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) at the end of February last year.

Ronen Sen retired from the IFS in April 2004, but was sent to Washington as a political appointee in August that year after the UPA government came to power.

Our Delhi bureau adds: The extension of Ronen Sen’s term has come in the wake of a series of last-ditch pleas for the nuclear deal from key players like US ambassador to India David Mulford and the Prime Minister’s special envoy, Shyam Saran.

Besides, three senators led by Joseph Biden, who heads the Senate committee on foreign affairs, have set a July deadline for the deal during their recent visit to India.

Left sources claimed there was a “message” in the government retaining Ronen Sen, a key figure in the nuclear deal negotiations in Washington.

But the sources said the Left still had the “veto” on the deal as the safeguards text would be scanned by the UPA-Left committee on the deal before the government moved ahead with negotiations with the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Nirupam Sen was the driving force behind India’s effort in 2004 and 2005 to get a permanent seat in the UN Security Council along with Germany, Japan and Brazil.

The effort became stuck because of differences in the African Union about including an African country by expanding the Group of Four.

The effort is now being revived in a different format.