In the first admission that Australia went along with China on the vote on a disclosure agreement of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the new Australian High Commissioner to India, Peter Varghese, on Thursday said that the vote was not “anti-Indian” or “pro-Chinese”, but “pro-ADB management”.

“Australia didn’t have any problem with the ADB’s country partnership strategy, which had funds earmarked for projects in Arunachal Pradesh. The proposal before the ADB was not to get involved in what was clearly a bilateral dispute between India and China, therefore, Australia took the position that ADB should not get involved in bilateral disputes,” Varghese, who presented his credentials to President Pratibha Patil on Thursday, said.

The Indian Express had first reported that China last month won a vote on a “disclosure agreement” that prevents the ADB from formally acknowledging Arunachal Pradesh as part of India. A disclosure agreement is a formal notification of a project once it is approved by the ADB Board.

On June 16, India had successfully isolated China - the entire ADB Board except Beijing had voted in India’s favour and secured approval for its $2.9 billion country plan. China had raised objections to the plan because it included $60 million projects in Arunachal Pradesh. It argued that ADB could not fund projects in “disputed areas” like Arunachal Pradesh.

It is learnt that India lost the vote despite the US and most of the Western bloc voting in its favour. In what was a narrow margin, the scales were tilted in China’s favour by Japan, Australia and a group of other South East Asian countries, along with Pakistan. The new Australian envoy also defended the Australian government’s position on not supplying uranium to India. “The answer is simple, because India is not an NPT-signatory, so the present Australian government has a clearly stated position that it will not supply uranium to non-NPT countries.”