India appoints ambassador to Canada after 9 months as ties improve after Trudeau’s exit

Senior diplomat Dinesh K Patnaik has been appointed as India’s next High Commissioner to Canada, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced on Thursday.

The appointment comes nearly nine months after India withdrew High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma and other senior diplomats from Canada amid escalating diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

“Shri Dinesh K Patnaik (IFS:1990), presently Ambassador to the Kingdom of Spain, has been appointed as the next High Commissioner of India to Canada. He is expected to take up the assignment shortly,” the MEA said in a statement.

Patnaik, a 1990-batch officer of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), is a veteran diplomat with over 25 years of experience in key diplomatic assignments worldwide.

He has served in Indian missions in Beijing, Dhaka, Vienna, and Geneva, and has held ambassadorial posts in Morocco and Cambodia. Patnaik also served as Deputy High Commissioner in London and was formerly Director-General of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).

According to media reports, the process of appointing new High Commissioners between India and Canada began after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Alberta this June.

The meeting marked a tentative thaw in bilateral ties, which had sharply deteriorated following Ottawa’s allegations linking Indian officials to the killing of Khalistani separatist  Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June 2023.

Tensions peaked in September 2023 when then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused India of involvement in Nijjar’s murder on Canadian soil — an allegation New Delhi strongly denied.

India also criticised Canada for what it described as a lack of seriousness in addressing Khalistani extremism.

Relations further deteriorated after Trudeau reportedly named Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma as a “person of interest” in an unspecified investigation.

In response, India expelled six Canadian diplomats and set an October 19, 2024 deadline for their departure, while also recalling its High Commissioner and senior diplomatic staff from Ottawa.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs had dismissed Trudeau’s claims as “preposterous imputations,” signalling a decisive breakdown in diplomatic engagement, one that now appears to be cautiously reversing with the latest high-level appointment.

With inputs from agencies