Winning Prized ICJ Seat by India – Three Firsts for India’s International Diplomacy
International Court of Justice is a UN body having 15 judges – five of the 15 judges being elected every three years through secret ballot jointly by the UN General Assembly (GA) and the UN Security Council (SC) and the winning candidate is required a majority in both GA and SC in simultaneous voting. Elected judges will hold office for a period of 9 years. On Bhandari’s expiry of 9 years as a judge in ICJ, India had again nominated him for the second time as a judge to be elected on India’s behalf. After five rounds of simultaneous voting by the Security Council and the General Assembly in New York, four judges from Brazil, Lebanon, France and Somalia were chosen for the bench out of 6 judges – leaving the UK ’ s candidate Sir Christopher Greenwood and the India ’ s candidate Dalveer Bhandari for the fifth judge to be decided by further rounds of voting. At the 12 th round, India ’ s candidate Bhandari received 183 of the 193 votes in GA and secured all the 15