India renews call at UN for legally-binding treaty against space weapons

India on Tuesday renewed its call at the United Nations for a comprehensive, legally-binding treaty to ban the placement of weapons in outer space. Rajya Sabha member Sudha Murty said selective approaches to space militarisation would be 'counterproductive'.

India has reiterated its preference for a legally binding, universally acceptable, verifiable and multilaterally negotiated instrument to keep weapons out of outer space, Rajya Sabha member Sudha Murty told the United Nations on October 21. She stressed that threats to the safety, security and sustainability of outer space must be considered together with the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation.

New Delhi identified the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva as the appropriate forum for negotiating such a treaty, and flagged dual-use space technologies -- civilian assets capable of military application -- as a key driver of urgency. India acknowledged the 2008 China-Russia draft treaty on preventing the placement of weapons in outer space as a basis for discussion, while remaining open to complementary non-binding norms that it said could not substitute for a binding instrument.

The call comes amid heightened concern over space militarisation after the US Air Force Secretary acknowledged this month that the United States has deployed 'on-orbit space control weapons'. For India, which is scaling up its space programme through the Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission and the planned Bharatiya Antariksha Station, stable international rules are seen as vital for civilian and commercial space activity.