Who is Dalveer Bhandari?

India's nominee Dalveer Bhandari was re-elected as the fifth judge to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) after the United Kingdom withdrew the nomination of Christopher Greenwood on Monday.

Bhandari received 183-193 votes in the General Assembly and secured all the 15 votes in the Security Council after separate and simultaneous elections were held at the UN headquarters in New York.

The elections were held after the United Kingdom, in a dramatic turn of events, withdrew out of the race for the Hague-based ICJ, thus paving the way for Bhandari's re-election to the prestigious world court.

Bhandari and Britain's Christopher Greenwood were locked in a neck-and-neck fight for re-election to the ICJ.

In a dramatic turn of events, the British Permanent Representative to the UN, Rycroft said that its candidate Judge Christopher Greenwood had decided to withdraw from the election to the 15-membered ICJ.

Here is all you want to know about Dalveer Bhandari

• Justice Bhandari was born on October 1, 1947.
• Bhandari studied humanities and law from Jodhpur University and practiced law at the Rajasthan High Court between 1968 and 1970.
• He acquired a Masters of Law degree from the Northwestern University School of Law in the US and thereafter started work at the Northwestern Legal Assistance Clinic.
• He appeared in Chicago's courts representing the clinic's litigants. Further, he started work with the Centre for Research in Chicago.
• The Tumkur University, Karnataka, also conferred the Doctor of Laws (LL.D) degree honoris causa on him for his contribution to the world of law and justice.
• Before he became a judge, Judge Bhandari had a distinguished career as an attorney at law for 23 years.
• He was a judge in the Indian judiciary for more than 20 years, before his elevation to the UN court.
• He served as a senior judge in the Supreme Court of India from 2005 to 2012. He became a judge in the Indian higher judiciary in 1991, and served as a judge in Delhi High Court, before going on to become the Chief Justice of Bombay High Court in 2004.
• In one of his landmark judgments as a Supreme Court judge, Bhandari granted a couple divorce on grounds of "irretrievable breakdown of marriage".
• Judge Bhandari ordered state governments to ensure sufficient night shelters for homeless people across the country. He also passed a number of orders in favour of the right to free and compulsory education.
• His judgments and orders have led to a much larger allocation of funds for malnutrition in the five most backward districts of Maharashtra.
• His orders led to the closure of a 100-year-old slaughterhouse and construction of a new modernised facility.
• In June 2013, the National Law University in Delhi, also conferred an honorary doctorate on Justice Bhandari, in the presence of President Pranab Mukherjee.
• In 2014, the then Vice President Hamid Ansari conferred the "First Justice Nagendra Singh International Peace Award" on Justice Bhandari.
• In 2016, he was conferred with the degree of Doctor of Letters by Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University Kota.
• In February this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released Judge Bhandari's book 'Judicial Reforms - Recent Global Trends' at Rashtrapati Bhavan in presence of President Mukherjee.

OneIndia News (with agency inputs)