India has a new judge at a major world court. Bimal Patel was sworn in as a Judge of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on October 1, 2026.

The oath was taken at the tribunal’s headquarters in Hamburg, Germany. The tribunal was set up under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982. It settles disputes about how the convention is read and used.

Patel will serve a nine-year term, from 2026 to 2035. Elected on June 18, 2026, at the UN in New York, he got 115 of 168 valid votes.

He succeeds Neeru Chadha, who ended her term as vice president on October 1. The bench has 21 judges from different regions.

Patel is an international law jurist. He holds doctorates in international law from Leiden University in the Netherlands and Jaipur National University. He was vice chancellor of Rashtriya Raksha University in Gujarat. He has served on the UN International Law Commission and India’s National Security Advisory Board.

An Indian judge on the bench gives India a voice in shaping global ocean law at a time when maritime disputes are rising.