New Delhi: India won a coveted position in the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) with its representative Shefali Juneja unanimously elected Chairperson of the Air Transport Committee, after 28 years. Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in October highlighted the moment with a tweet that read, “Great News! This solidifies India’s position in the global aviation ecosystem, and strengthens our journey towards becoming the largest civil aviation market.”

He was responding to a tweet by India at ICAO saying: “India wins coveted position in ICAO to become- Chairperson of Air Transport Committee, after 28years.Representative of India, Dr Shefali Juneja gets unanimously elected in Council today.”

Juneja has previously served as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Civil Aviation dealing with international agreements. Representative of India in ICAO since August 2019, she helped to transform the bilateral air service negotiations by implementing Open Skies as per the National Civil Aviation Policy 2016.

Prior to joining the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Juneja, the 1992-batch officer of the Indian Revenue Service, served on many sensitive and challenging assignments, semi-judicial positions, and administrative and financial positions in the government.

ICAO is funded and directed by 193 national governments to support their diplomacy and cooperation in air transport as signatory states to the Chicago Convention (1944). Its core function is to maintain an administrative and expert bureaucracy (the ICAO Secretariat) supporting these diplomatic interactions, and to research new air transport policy and standardisation innovations as directed and endorsed by governments through the ICAO Assembly or by the ICAO Council which the assembly elects.