After greater than two years, the U.S. lastly has an envoy to India: Eric Garcetti.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate confirmed former Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti’s appointment because the nation’s envoy to India, 20 months after President Joe Biden nominated him. The affirmation was held up partially because of considerations over how he responded to allegations in opposition to his pal and once-adviser, Rick Jacobs, who was accused of sexual harassment throughout the then-mayor’s tenure at City Hall.

“We look forward to working with him to take forward our multifaceted bilateral relations,” Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson for India’s exterior ministry, instructed reporters at a briefing Thursday.

The affirmation of Garcetti, a 52-year-old Biden loyalist, ends a vacuum in one of many nation’s highest profile diplomatic posts. India is the world’s most populous nation, and the U.S. sees it as a geopolitical power China has to reckon with, because the latter asserts its authoritarian regime within the Indo-Pacific area.

But Garcetti’s job isn’t prone to be straightforward, having already provoked the ire of some Indians because of feedback he’s made prior to now. During Garcetti’s affirmation hearings in 2021, he stated he would “actively raise” human rights points in New Delhi, in response to a query concerning the Citizenship Amendment Act, which the Indian parliament handed in 2019. The regulation, a cornerstone and marketing campaign promise by the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), grants immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh a shot at making use of for Indian citizenship—however provided that they’re Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, or Buddhist. It was criticized for making Muslims from these nations into “illegal migrants” and seemingly relegating India’s Islamic group of some 200 million individuals into second-class residents. Widespread protests against the law erupted throughout the South Asian nation in 2020.

Since coming to energy in 2014, the BJP, with President Narenda Modi on the helm, has overseen a marked rise in Hindu supremacy and anti-Muslim sentiment in India.

When requested about Garcetti’s remarks on human rights, Bagchi, India’s exterior affairs ministry spokesperson, stated he has not heard of any latest remark from the diplomat-designate. “There is something on social media, which is very old,” he stated. “Our position on many of these issues are well-known.”

Tarun Vijay, a former BJP member of India’s higher parliament home, posted on Twitter on Wednesday that sending an envoy “with a political agenda to interfere in our domestic issues with false notions” is “ignorant and arrogant” and “must not be acceptable.” And Abhinav Prakash, the vp of BJP’s youth wing, instructed Russian state-owned information company Sputnik India that Garcetti’s appointment may gas “anti-West sentiment” in India.

The BJP doesn’t symbolize everybody’s views although. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s U.S.-India Business Council wished Garcetti nicely in taking up the submit left by Kenneth Juster in 2021. The council’s deputy managing director Shreerupa Mitra, who relies in Delhi, stated Garcetti’s affirmation will assist the U.S. and India “achieve critical goals in decarbonization, human development, and economic resilience.” Indian-American group chief Ajay Bhutoria additionally congratulated Garcetti, tweeting that he believes the brand new U.S. ambassador “will work tirelessly to deepen this relationship and promote cooperation” between the 2 nations.

India’s relationship with the U.S. considerably improved in 2022: Biden met with Modi twice, strengthening commerce ties between the 2 nations, and reinforcing the regional Quad safety dialogue with Japan and Australia. Yogesh Joshi, a analysis fellow on the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies, says Garcetti is prone to prioritize this warming alliance, which can see his pursuit of a human rights-focused agenda in New Delhi take a backseat.

“The democratic values provide the icing on the cake, but that is not what is driving the Indo-U.S. relationship,” Joshi tells TIME.

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