| Human Rights Centre | |Publication | Gender Equity | |back | |Home | |Guest Book |
Commenced legal practice in 1953. Enrolled as Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India 1971; Additional Solicitor General and Solicitor General of India, 1977-1980; Attorney General for India, 1989-1990 and from 7th April 1998 till date.
President: United Lawyers' Association; Chairman Advisory Board, Transparency International (India); President, India International Centre; President, Capital Jazz; Convener: Minority Rights Group (India); Vice-President, Human Rights Committee of the International Bar Association; Vice-President, Commonwealth Lawyers; Member, Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Lawyers; Member, Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament Law of International Law Association; Vice President, Indian Law Institute; Vice-President, International Law Association (Regional Branch, India); Member, Governing council & Executive Committee of the Indian Law Institute; Honorary Professor of Law, National Law School of India, Bangalore; Member, Organising Committee of 70th Biennial Conference of International Law Association held in 2002 at New Delhi; Appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission as Special Rapporteur in October 1977 to the UN General Assembly on human rights situations in Nigeria; Re-elected as a member of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of UN Commission on Human Rights for four years from April 2002; Member, UN Working Group on Minorities; Appointed in May 1999 as Personal Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for East Timor to report on the human rights situation in East Timor to the High Commissioner; Appeared and argued [in April 2000] for the Government of India in the International Court of Justice in the Pakistan complaint regarding aerial incident; Appointed [in June 2000] as a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague for six years.
Publications: The Law of the Press Censorship in India (1976); The Emergency, Censorship and Press in India, 1975-1977; Chapter on Fundamental Rights in ' Public Law of India' (1979); Chapter on 'The Constitution and the Governor' in "The Governor, Sage or Saboteur" (1985); Monograph on ' Protection of Human Rights in Emergencies' (1988); Monograph on 'Equity in the United States and India' published in "Constitutionalism and Rights", Ed. Louis Henkin & Albert Rosenthal, Columbia University Press (1990); Obliging Government to Control Itself; Recent Development in Indian Administrative Law' published in " Public Law" (Spring 1994); ' Freedom of Expression and Censorship: Some Aspects of the Indian Experience' published in Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly (Winter 1994); Freedom of Expression published in Commonwealth Law Journal Bulletin (1994).
Delivered several lectures on different aspects of constitutional and administrative law and in particular on press freedom, independence of the judiciary and judiciary activism.
Other interest: music and literature, especially poetry.
Award: Conferred Padam Vibhushan [the second highest civilian award of the nation] in March 2002. Kinloch Forbes Gold Medal in Roman Law and Jurisprudence (1952).
Present Address: Office: Office of the Attorney General of India, Supreme Court of India, Tilak Marg, New Delhi-110001 [Tel: 3383254; Fax: 3782101], Official Residence: 10 Motilal Nehru Marg, New Delhi-110011 [Tel/Fax: 3010525/ 3018696]- Chambers: 134 Sunder Nagar, New Delhi-110003 [Tel: 4354003, 4357504; Fax: 4354014]- Private residence: A-128 Niti Bagh, New Delhi-110049 [Tel: 6855323/ 6528163; Fax: 6862s957]