After almost 50-day delay in appointment, Sudhir Krishnawamy takes charge as NLSIU's new VC

Sudhir Krishnaswamy took over as the vice-chancellor of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) after his appointment was confirmed by the Chancellor of the varsity, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi. Prof Sudhir Krishnaswamy is an alumnus of the country's oldest national law university.

The nearly 50-day delay in the appointment of a new vice-chancellor at NLSIU — despite a panel of experts shortlisting three candidates and a sub-committee of the NLSIU executive council picking Krishnaswamy to be the V-C in July — had resulted in students protests at NLSIU. The sit-in protest was held in light of information that there was likely to be a change in the composition of the Executive Council (EC) of NLSIU, which would, in turn, have a bearing on the appointment of a new Vice-Chancellor.

The matter was resolved finally earlier this week after an alumnus of the university met the CJI and the acting chancellor of NLSIU, senior judge Justice Sharad Bobde, on behalf of the students and briefed them about the ongoing protests. The CJI and Justice Bobde sent a message to the students to call off their protests as the process of selection of a new V-C was complete and that the decision of a sub-committee of the NLSIU executive council to pick Krishnaswamy as the new VC was final.

Prof Krishnaswamy completed his graduation in BA LLB from NLSIU in 1998. He has been a 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. More recently, he was a faculty at the Azim Premji University in Bengaluru. He is also the co-founder of Centre for Law & Policy Research (CLPR), a research organisation based in Bengaluru. He is also a Rhodes scholar and acts as a visiting professor for Indian Constitutional Law at the Columbia Law School.