<P> In 1953, the chief delegate of India at the time, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was elected the first woman President of the UN General Assembly . India supported the struggle towards global disarmament and the ending of the arms race, and towards the creation of a more equitable international economic order . India had a mediatory role in resolving the stalemate over prisoners of war in Korea contributing to the signing of the armistice ending the Korean War in 1953 . India chaired the five - member Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission while the Indian Custodian Force supervised the process of interviews and repatriation that followed . India then went on to chair the three international commissions for supervision and control for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos established by the 1954 Geneva Accords on Indochina . India also had an active role to play in the Suez Crisis in 1956 with the role of Nehru, both as Indian Prime minister and a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement being significant . Indian historian Inder Malhotra wrote that "Now Nehru--who had tried to be even - handed between the two sides--denounced Anthony Eden (the then British Prime Minister) and co-sponsors of the aggression vigorous . He had a powerful, if relatively silent, ally in the US president Dwight D. Eisenhower who went to the extent of using America's clout in the IMF to make Eden and Mollet (the then French Prime Minister) behave". </P> <P> Charter provisions on Non-Self - Governing Territories were given a new thrust when the UN adopted the landmark 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples which was co-sponsored by India . The following year, the Special Committee on the Implementation of the Declaration on Decolonization was established to study, investigate and recommend action to bring an end to colonialism, it was chaired by India for the first time . India played a leading role in the formation of a Sub-Committee against Apartheid set up by the General Assembly . When the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination was adopted in 1965, India was among the earliest signatories, however it does not recognise competence under article 14 and it does not consider itself bound by article 22 . </P> <P> India also played a prominent role in articulating the economic concerns of developing countries in such UN-sponsored conferences as the triennial UN Conference on Trade and Development and the 1992 Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro . It has been an active member of the Group of 77, and later the core group of the G - 15 nations . Other issues, such as environmentally sustainable development and the promotion and protection of human rights, have also been an important focus of India's foreign policy in international forums . </P> <P> Despite its anti-status quo stand on many global issues, India's attitude toward the basic structure of the UN was fundamentally conservative . It accepted the organization and distribution of power in the UN, as both a guarantee of Indian sovereignty and as a check on the numerical superiority of the U.S. and its western coalition . India supported the charter provisions for a Security Council veto for the great powers, opposed the U.S. initiative to circumvent the veto through the Uniting for Peace Resolution, dismissed Hammarskjöld's notion of a "UN presence" as interventionist and opposed all efforts to conduct UN directed plebiscites as tests of opinion . </P>

When did india become a member of who