‘A useful tool': annual share of abstentions in India's U.N. votes at all-time high

The Hindu

20-07-2025

An increasingly polarised world has led to India altering its voting strategy at the United Nations in such a way that the proportion of abstentions every year has increased while the 'yes' votes have reduced, an analysis has found. According to former diplomats, this rise in the share of abstentions could in fact help India establish its own position on various issues.
An analysis by The Hindu of more than 5,500 different resolutions in the United Nations that India voted on between 1946 and June 2025 shows that the annual percentage of 'yes' votes by India has fallen to 56%, the lowest since 1955. On the other hand, the annual percentage of abstentions has increased to 44%, the highest share in India's history at the U.N.
The data also show that this change in voting patterns began around 2019.
India's voting pattern remained volatile until the late 1960s, with the percentage of annual 'yes' votes swinging between 20% and 100% during this period. The percentage of abstentions also fluctuated between 0% and 40% during this period.
The subsequent 25 years — between around 1970 and 1994 — saw the magnitude of this volatility decrease substantially. The percentage of annual 'yes' votes during this period ranged between a low of 74% and a high of 96%. Annual abstentions, too, ranged between 8% and 19% during this period.
Between the mid-1990s and 2019, India's voting patterns in the U.N. became even more stable, with the share of 'yes' votes ranging between 75% and 83%. The share of abstentions ranged between 10% and 17%.
According to former representatives to the U.N., the increase in abstentions is simultaneously a reflection of an increasingly polarised world, as well as a reflection of the fact that U.N. resolutions have become much more complicated.
'Abstentions a useful tool'
'This may best be looked at through a much wider lens than merely an India-centric one to better understand the pattern,' T.S. Tirumurti, former Permanent Representative of India to the U.N., explained. 'It is probably a reflection of greater polarisation between major powers in the U.N. This has resulted in a lesser incentive to make compromises by either side to strive hard for a consensus resolution, which was the case a decade or so earlier.'
In such a context, Mr. Tirumurti further said, abstentions also provide emerging and middle powers like India the opportunity to express themselves more freely, rather than merely going along with the consensus or voting against it.
Voting for or against a resolution has also become more fraught now because they have become very complicated, according to Syed Akbaruddin, former Permanent Representative of India in the U.N.
'Previously, resolutions used to be clear and focused on one topic,' he explained. 'What happens now is that contested resolutions are becoming like Christmas trees, where several different aspects and provisions are hung on the same resolution. So, there are situations where we might agree with most of the provisions of a resolution but not with some. In such situations, we cannot vote 'yes' or 'no', and so abstention is a useful tool.'