November 11, 2017:

Justice Bhandari is locked in a deadlock with the British candidate, Christopher Greenwood.

India's candidate for International Court of Justice (ICJ) hit a significant roadblock on Friday, failing to win the re-election bid in both United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council.

Final decision now rests on a new round of balloting on Monday, which means a weekend of intense high-level political lobbying is in store.

This is India's first big setback this year in winning multilateral governance positions.

But it is important in view of the fact that India, earlier this year, took Pakistan to ICJ to seek consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been in the Pakistani custody over the allegations of being an "Indian spy".

Final judgments on that will be delivered in December. Pakistan has appointed an Ad-hoc Judge to ICJ for this case.

If J. Bhandari loses, India will be without its own judge in International Court of Justice.

Bhandari was elected mid-term last time, so, if elected, he will serve a full term.

Officials state that the fact that Bhandari's candidature was decided by Govt. as late as June, when others had firmed up their candidates a year in advance, diminished chances of successfully lobbying for him.

India had to compress a lot of lobbying into a few months, which was tough going because most of the countries had already pledged their votes.

India's only satisfaction so far is that it has, as a non-permanent member, been able to hold down a candidate from a permanent member of UNSC.

Greenwood's support dwindled to 76 from 145 in the successive rounds of voting.

The Indian officials are confident they would be able to maintain their lead in UNGA. UNSC is a different matter, but here, too, if India can secure about three extra votes, it would tip scales in its favour.

UK has always had a judge at world court since it was established in the year 1945.

Judges who were elected by United Nations are Ronny Abraham of France, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf of Somalia, Antonio Augusto Cancado Trindade of Brazil and Nawaf Salam of Lebanon.

Fifth Council and  the Sixth Assembly voting rounds, which were run-offs between Bhandari and Greenwood, resulted in a deadlock.

Bhandari won in Assembly and Greenwood in Council. In Final Assembly round, he received 115 votes to Greenwood's 76.

In the last round in Council, Bhandari received six votes and Greenwood nine.

Bhandari was elected in the year 2012 to succeed Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh of Jordan and he defeated a candidate from Philippines.

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