New York: At a felicitation and dinner organised by the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) in New York, European Member of Parliament (MP) Nirj Deva said that India, as the largest democracy and an emerging economic power, should be elevated to be a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and the next UN Secretary General should be from Asia.

Deva was in New York representing the European Parliament at the UN General Assembly session.

Speaking on the subject "South Asian Communities, World Trade and Global Stability", Deva said the South Asian communities are making an impact in the Western countries, such as UK, USA, Netherlands and Canada. However, the community has to be more politically involved.

Deva cited the success of the Jewish community in political process in UK, where the community at one time had 80 MPs for a population of 250,000 people. "We need political representation commensurate with our economic success. If we do not have appropriate representation, our communities could end up with situations similar to what happened in Uganda in early 1970s," said Deva.

Born in Sri Lanka, Deva has been an aeronautical engineer, scientist and a company chairman and director. Elected to UK Parliament representing Brentford and Isleworth in 1992, Deva served as Parliamentary private secretary to Minister of State, Scottish Office. Currently, Deva is a Conservative Member of European Parliament representing South East of England since 1999 (eight million voters).

"The top 200 transnational companies (TNCs) combined have turnovers twice the size of combined gross national products (GNPs) of 80 per cent of the world's population and larger than the combined GNP of 182 countries. Therefore, the TNCs have to play a role in world's development," Deva added.

Further on the United Nations, Deva said there should be an Economic Security Council and a Petitions Committee to hear citizens' rights. During the question/answer session, on a question on the justification of Iraq war, Deva said, we could be more comfortable now since no more atrocities are done to Iraqi people and that they would have a chance to elect their own representative government.

The program ended with GOPIO inducting Deva as an honorary member.