OdishaLIVE Bureau
There is a wave of cheers for India in the national and international community as Justice Dalveer Bhandari’s re-election on the bench of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is seen as a diplomatic victory for India on the global sphere.
The permanent members of the Security Council; the US, Russia, France, and China were in favour of Sir Christopher Greenwood, Bhandari’s rival candidate from Britain as UK is the fifth permanent member of the UN Security Council.
India has always rooted for democratic process while voting at such global platforms where Britain was thought to employ back room lobbying tactics and also allegedly tried to stall the final round of voting. India believes that in both the Security Council and the General Assembly, there should not be an intervention or adoption of a process that has never been used before or the one that undermines the voice of the majority. The voting in the General Assembly which tremendously favours India is proof of the new global order, which is not pleasant to the world powers, more so, to the five permanent members.
Interestingly, for the first time in its 71-year history, UK will not have a judge on the bench of the ICJ. Critics point out that “The UK’s failure to guarantee a place on the court of an organisation it helped to found has been interpreted as a sign of its increasing irrelevance on the world stage following the decision to leave the European Union.”
Bhandari’s election upsets what has become a traditional balance in the ICJ. Besides a permanent member going unrepresented, four Asian countries will be represented on the ICJ bench instead of the usual three. Justice Bhandari’s election is an evidence of respect by the global community to India’s growing stature.
Born on October 1, 1947, Justice Bhandari graduated in Humanities and Law on an international scholarship. He holds a Master of Laws from the Northwestern University, Chicago, USA. He has practiced in the Rajasthan High Court in Civil, Criminal and Constitutional branches of law from 1973 to 1976. He was the erstwhile Chairperson of the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee for several years and the Chairperson of the Advisory Board of Delhi State of COFEPOSA and NSA for a number of years.
He was appointed as Chief Justice of Maharashtra and Goa on July 25, 2004 and then elevated as a Judge of the Supreme Court on October 28, 2005.
Bhandari was a sitting judge of the Supreme Court, when he was elected to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on April 27, 2012, the first time an Indian ever managed to get this key international post in over two decades.
