Alumnus Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy Takes Charge As New Vice-Chancellor Of NLSIU

Prof. Krishnaswamy was shortlisted for the position by a unanimous decision of the Committee constituted by the NLSIU Executive Council, under the Chairmanship of Supreme Court Judge, Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde. Other members of the committee included retired SC Judge, Justice V. Gopala Gowda, sitting SC Judge, Justice Mohan M. Shantanagoudar, NLSIU Professor Dr. V. S. Elizabeth and Chairperson of the Bar Council of India, Manan Kumar Mishra.

Later, a high-level committee appointed by the Chief Justice of India, Chancellor of NLSIU, consisting of Justice M. P. Singh; Attorney General for India, K. K. Venugopal and Senior Advocate Arvind Datar officially announced his appointment on August 2.

However, the college administration named M. K. Ramesh as "Additional VC/ VC (FAC)" instead and did not appoint Prof. Krishnaswamy, in complete disregard of the above decisions.

The Student Body attributed this holdup to the conflict of interest of the Registrar, Prof. O. V. Nandimath and resorted to protests and boycotted classes.

The protests were later called off on a clarification given the CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justice S. A. Bobde. They said that protests were a result of a lot of misinformation and clarified that the decision of the Sub-Committee to appoint Prof. Krishnaswamy was final and awaited only a formal decision.

Prof. Krishnaswamy is an alumnus of NLSIU itself from the batch of 1998 and holds a BCL and Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University. Before being appointed as the VC, he was serving as a professor at the Azim Premji University in Bangalore.

Formerly, he has held the positions of Teaching Fellow in Law at the Pembroke College at Oxford University, an Assistant Professor at NLSIU and a Professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He co-founded the Centre for Law & Policy Research and authored the book titled 'Democracy and Constitutionalism in India', published by the Oxford University Press in 2009. He has also been a part of the Prime Minister's Committee on Infrastructure and the Kasturirangan Committee on Governance of Bangalore.