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New Delhi: India formally launched its campaign for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC) this week, but another pillar of its presence in the UN system is quietly set to disappear.

With the deadline for nominations to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) now over, New Delhi has not put forward a candidate to succeed Judge Dalveer Bhandari, marking the end of India’s 14-year run on the world court, cemented by Bhandari’s 2017 re-election, celebrated at the time in New Delhi as a diplomatic triumph and evidence of its Global South leadership.

That unheralded exit comes even as Jaishankar was in New York on Monday to launch India’s campaign for a non-permanent Security Council seat for the 2028-29 term. Speaking at UN headquarters, he outlined India’s priorities for the campaign, including its peacekeeping record and long-standing commitment to multilateralism.

A couple of weeks before India launched its UNSC campaign, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, as per procedure, circulated a memorandum and an accompanying note to formally set in motion the election of five judges to the ICJ for a nine-year term beginning in February 2027. 

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The memorandum recorded that national groups attached to the Permanent Court of Arbitration had been given four and a half months, until June 24, to file their nominations. The note carried the final list of candidates who were nominated before the deadline. India is absent from that list.

Judge Dalveer Bhandari of the International Court of Justice. Photo: Facebook.

With nominations now closed, India cannot enter the race. Unless an unforeseen vacancy arises, Bhandari’s retirement next February will leave India without a judge on the UN’s top judicial body for the first time since 2012.

India’s retreat from the ICJ also comes as its presence across the UN’s other top legal bodies is narrowing. Bimal Patel, the international law scholar India elected to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in June, is set to give up his seat on the International Law Commission once he takes up the ITLOS post on October 1.

India will then hold only its ITLOS seat among the three bodies it has traditionally prioritised, a departure from a pattern it has maintained since at least the mid-2010s, when it held seats on all three simultaneously. The next scheduled opportunity to contest an ICJ seat is 2029.

There has been no public explanation as to why India has chosen not to contest the election.

The Wire has learnt that a former chief justice of India had been a favourite to replace Bhandari as India’s candidate in certain quarters. He had even been sounded out at one stage, even as there was grapevine talk of informal lobbying among other sitting and former Supreme Court........

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