India, UK in ugly spat over spot in International Court of Justice

India and the UK are headed for what might turn out to be the worst diplomatic showdown between the two nations in decades. In a brazen attempt to stall the surge in support for India’s candidate for the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Dalveer Bhandari, in the last round of voting at the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the UK is threatening to use its power as a permanent member of UN Security Council (UNSC) to end the process of voting.

At an informal discussion of the UNSC, the UK is learnt to have stated that it was considering stalling further voting at the UN after a single round of balloting on Monday. It has instead proposed an arcane mechanism, that of a joint conference comprising three members each from the UNGA and UNSC, as a substitute to continued voting. What has angered India, which is actively working to thwart Britain’s move, is that the mechanism has never been used in ICJ history to break a deadlock in the appointment of judges.

The proposal the UK threatens to initiate in the SC, as support for its candidate Christopher Greenwood drops sharply in the UNGA, is attracting considerable criticism from across a broad spectrum of countries. As the previous rounds of voting have shown, Bhandari enjoys overwhelming support in the UNGA with a near 2/3rd majority (121 countries favoured him over Britain’s candidate), but Greenwood has managed to negate it with a slender lead in the 15-member UNSC with help from its permanent members. A candidate needs a majority in both the UNGA and UNSC to win.

There have been many such deadlocks in the past too, most recently in 2014 and 2011, but these were always resolved by more rounds of voting. The UK though is trying to duck voting, saying just one more vote on Monday is enough before forming a joint conference, an untried mechanism that may take weeks to set up and months to yield any result.

A senior Indian official said the UK’s tactics to try and “steal the election outcome” was akin to those of the robber-baron Robert Clive and added, tongue in cheek, that the new India was no Siraj-ud-Daulah, the last Nawab of Bengal who was defeated by Clive. The Indian diplomatic offensive at the UN has succeeded in stringing together an impressive coalition of countries from Africa, the Asia-Pacific and also Latin America. According to Indian officials, many former British colonies have joined India against their former colonial master.

The election, which started off as an effort to elect an individual judge to the ICJ, now has broader overtones as it has pitched a declining UK and a rising India in a high-voltage diplomatic battle. Many UNGA members have been taken aback by UK’s threat to seek a joint conference as there exists an unequivocal legal opinion, provided in 1984 UN Juridical Yearbook, that argues against resorting to that option.