A son of UK brought laurel to the state today

DAINIK NATION BUREAU

Securing all 15 votes in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Justice Dalveer Bhandari was re-elected as the 15th judge of the International Court of Justice on Tuesday. While the battle for the last seat at the Hague-based world court between Sir Christopher Greenwood and Justice Bhandari had reached a deadlock, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted 183-193 in favour of Justice Bhandari. The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has congratulated Justice Dalveer Bhandari on being re-elected to the International Court of Justice.

“I congratulate Justice Dalveer Bhandari on being re-elected to the International Court of Justice. His re-election is a proud moment for us.

A chronology of Justice Bhandari’s journey, renomination to his election to the ICJ:

June 2017

India re-nominated Justice Bhandari for the next term at the ICJ. Former Chief Justice of India Justice J S Khehar and the incumbent CJI Justice Dipak Mishra were two other choices for nomination of judge at ICJ before Justice Bhandari was locked.

November 9
The two organs of the United Nations re-elected four people as the judges of ICJ for a term of nine years. The elected judges’s term start from February 6, 2018. The four members re-elected are Judges Ronny Abraham (France), Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf (Somalia), Antônio Augusto and Cançado Trindade (Brazil). Nawaf Salam (Lebanon) was elected as a new member of the Court.

Since the vote given by the UNGA and UNSC should be unanimous and the candidate should receive an absolute majority from both the UN organs, fifth member to the court was not elected on November 9. The deadlock between the two candidates, Greenwood and Bhandari, occurred when, in the fourth round, Justice Bhandari received a majority of 115 votes in the UNGA as against the 76 received by his opponent. However, Greenwood received nine out of 15 votes in the UNSC, thereby defeating Justice Bhandari in the UNSC. Different voting results in both UN organs resulted in a deadlock and ICJ postponed the voting for November 13.

November 13
As scheduled, the UNGA and UNSC met and held five rounds of voting for the election of the fifth member. In each of the five rounds, Greenwood received nine votes out of 15 in UNSC as against the five Bhandari received. However, the count of vote in favour of Greenwood dropped from 76 to 68 in UNGA. The vote count for Bhandari increased from 115 to 121 in UNGA as against 97 votes recieved by his opponent.

November 20
On November 17, the UN organs decided to meet on November 20 to hold the next set of voting. Six rounds of voting were held in UNGA and UNSC where Greenwood was behind more than 50 votes in the UNGA and similar vote count was in the UNSC with Greenwood leading with four votes, nine to five. Facing another deadlock, the UN organs decided to meet the next day to conduct the 12th round of voting.

November 21

Before the voting could begin, Greenwood withdrew his candidature from the re-election and Justice Bhandari secured the last seat at ICJ. British Permanent Representative to the UN, Matthew Rycroft wrote letters to the UNGA and UNSC before the 12th round of voting. “The UK has concluded that it is wrong to continue to take up the valuable time of the Security Council and the UN General Assembly with further rounds of elections,” he was quoted as saying by news agencies.

NOTE- INPUT FROM INDIAN EXPRESS