NUJS Legal Aid Society

International Conference organised by the NUJS Legal Aid Society in association with King's College Legal Clinic and Doughty Street Chambers UK. We are joined right now by Shantanu Chakraverti and Shantanu Chakraborty from DISHA EARTH , Sankar Halder from Mukti Foundation , Mukut Biswas from Prameya Foundation speak on panel titled "Grounded legal and extra legal remedies in the Sundarbans: Challenges Ahead".

Join us now at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNZNXlqwq9o

For the past several months, the NUJS Legal Aid Society in collaboration with the The Dickson P**n School of Law, King's College London, Doughty Streets UK and Jadavpur University has been working towards launching a project touching upon the lives of thousands of climate refugees in the Sunderbans region. This included a pilot field visit and training workshops involving NUJS students in August. The families we met told stories that must prompt the entire global community to take a closer look at what is unfolding in Sunderbans. This project is a small step forward in this direction.

At our inauguration, an expert panel of speakers, including Dr. Emily Barritt, will discuss transnational legal remedies for climate change and how law students can help deliver access to climate justice.

Our Panel includes -

The Rt. Hon. Lord Carnwath of Notting Hill, retired Justice of the UK Supreme Court

Professor Tuhin Ghosh, Director, School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University
Krishnendu Mukherjee, Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers

Sanjula Chakraborty, law student at West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences

Dr Palash Halder, Geologist from Gosaba Islands in the Sundarbans

Ankita Chakravarty, Assistant Professor, West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences

Dr. Emily Barritt, Senior Lecturer and Co-Director, Transnational Law Institute, King’s College London

Rt. Hon. Justice Madan B Lokur, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India and current Judge of the Supreme Court of Fiji

Please visit for more information: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/access-to-climate-justice-the-sundarbans

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8Dg53xhlSpOk-jHSt4UXfQ

We are happy to announce that SAHYOG (A Pro Bono Research Project) in collaboration with the NUJS Legal Aid Society is launching its official web portal tomorrow. The inauguration will be live tomorrow at 4:15 pm. Looking forward to all of you joining us!

In the latest blog for Let's Get Talking, NUJS students and Legal Aid Society members Dev Arya and Sushovan Patnaik critique the recent decision by the Mumbai Police to unleash a relentless crackdown on the city's beggars. They analyse the recent decision through a historical, constitutional, and rehabilitative lens.

Read Part I here:
https://lgtbynujslas.blogspot.com/2021/03/mumbai-polices-crackdown-on-beggars-is_18.html?m=1

Read Part II here:
https://lgtbynujslas.blogspot.com/2021/03/mumbai-polices-crackdown-on-beggars-is.html?m=1

Mumbai Police’s crackdown on beggars is colonial nostalgia and a constitutional nightmare – Part I Mumbai Police’s crackdown on beggars is colonial nostalgia and a constitutional nightmare (Part I) Shushovan Patnaik , Dev Vrat Arya; 2nd...

We are elated to announce the relaunching of the official blog of the NUJS Legal Aid Society - 'Let's Get Talking'. The blog was launched with an aim to promote legal aid and human rights discourse via both academic and opinion-based writing, and we hope to carry this objective forward.

In our first post for 2021, Pratyush Jena and Subhajit Lodh Choudhury, second year law students at NUJS, critique the Labour Codes, 2019-20 and vouch for empowering reforms.

Part 1:
https://lgtbynujslas.blogspot.com/2021/02/shortfalls-of-labour-codes-2019-20-part.html

Part 2:
https://lgtbynujslas.blogspot.com/2021/02/shortfalls-of-labour-codes-2019-20-part_14.html

Shortfalls of the Labour Codes, 2019-20 (Part I) SHORTFALLS OF THE LABOUR CODES, 2019-20 (PART I) Pratyush Jena, Subhajit Lodh Chowdhury; 2nd Year, B.A. LL.B(Hons.), West Bengal Nationa...

We are happy to announce the second part of our lecture series on “Reimagining Environmental Justice in India: Empathy, Resilience and Intersectionality”. This time we shall have with us Manju Menon, renowned environmentalist known for her research work in the environmental decision-making process in regulatory and public arenas.

The topic for her lecture will be "Revisiting the Godavarman case: Marginalised communities and forest governance in India."

This lecture shall primarily revolve around the Godavarman case or the Forest case (1995) of the Supreme Court that has influenced several facets of forest governance in India. As such, Manju Menon will be focussing on a particular set of solutions adopted by the Court through this case to deal with the problem of forest loss in India. The solutions have benefited some expected parties and have ignored and encroached on a whole set of historical relationships that socially marginalised communities have with land and forests.

The lecture will be streamed live on our Facebook and Youtube this Sunday, 3pm onwards.

The NUJS Legal Aid Society is going to be conducting what we plan to be the first of a panned-out lecture series, wherein we shall be hosting Dr Armin Rosencraz, renowned political scientist and lawyer who is a figure of authority for environmental law in India. The topic of the lecture will be, “Legislative Assault and the way forward: Reimagining Environmental Justice in India”. The lecture comes at a particularly important time as recent policy assaults on the environmental law regime of the country endanger environmental sanctity and allow exploitation of natural resources and communities.

Over the course of Prof. Rosencranz's impressive academic career, he has taught energy and climate for many years at Stanford and is currently Professor of Law at JGLS. His co-authored book, 'Environmental Law and Policy in India' is considered the standard text in the subject area. He has received 5 Fulbright Awards in totality and has also widely written on environmental policy in India for several media outlets.

The lecture is scheduled for August 2, 2020 at 3:00 pm. The lecture will be streamed live either on our YouTube or Facebook channels. The lecture will be an interactive one and attendees are encouraged to raise questions.

The NUJS Legal Aid Society is now on Instagram. You can follow us at to remain updated with our initiatives and discussions on human rights, legal aid and awareness.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CC3Uc0EBEXG/?igshid=1v916qt82kszx

In the landmark ruling of Hussainara Khatoon, the Supreme Court of India observed that fairness under Art. 21 of the Constitution is impaired if free legal aid is denied to the vulnerable under-trials languishing in our jails and along with is denied true, rational justice. Ever since its inception in 2005, the Legal Aid Society at NUJS, as one of the oldest legal aid committees across law schools in India, has strived to live by this principle, and the principles of the Indian Constitution. Whether the law can be truly perceived to be so disjunct from the prevailing of empathy, love and social justice, and whether it has any real purpose beyond manifesting all of this, are questions we have asked ourselves consistently over the course of the last 15 years. This introspection, in turn has inspired us and our goal has never been only to put people in the mainstream of the hailed process of getting justice but to help them know their rights and identify the same. The LAS, through its various programs and events like outreach and sensitization, policy research and clinic work has endeavoured for long to come to the aid of those at the fringes, pushed to the margins, stripped of life values, their cries turned into peripheral murmurs for the privileged among us. The LAS Team hopes to carry this work forward.