The UN human rights commission has put India in a deeply embarrassing position by seeking to become a "friend of the court" in a case filed in India's Supreme Court challenging the validity of the country's controversial citizenship law.

India, however, maintains that the citizenship law is entirely its "internal matter" and that the UN body has no jurisdiction to intervene in the legal process.

But many opposition politicians in India believe the commission's move is proof of how low India's international image has sunk.

Many Indian legal experts also say there is no legal bar to the UN body's request.

Former diplomat Deb Mukharji, a former Indian high commissioner in Dhaka, recently filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the validity of the controversial citizenship law.

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has given the situation a dramatic turn by seeking to intervene as amicus curiae in the case, "Deb Mukharji and others vs Union of India".

The office of the current high commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile, has already informed the Indian mission in Geneva of the decision.

Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and now a Congress MP in India, is not at all surprised, because in his view India's international image has never been this bad before.

In his words: "For the past six months India has been discussed negatively all over the world, and even countries that have always been friendly to India are turning."

"Foreign friends of mine in high government positions are even saying: we want friendship with India, but please tell your government not to make that job so hard for us."

Source: BBC Bangla. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.