Education

BA.LLB; LLM

Profile

Akshra Mehla is an Assistant Professor of Law at Manipal Law School and a Visiting Faculty at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru. She is pursuing her Doctoral studies from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.

Her scholarship is situated at the intersection of legal theory, surveillance studies, and feminist jurisprudence. Utilizing post-modern frameworks, her work emphasizes the evolving nature of state power and the mechanisms through which institutional apparatuses govern, classify, and regulate subjects.

Her research explores the tension between democratic imperatives and the authoritarian expansion of state surveillance, understanding how legislative frameworks and digital architectures function as instruments of control, mapping the state’s strategic management of marginalized bodies and populations.

Research

Legal Theory & Jurisprudence, Surveillance Studies, Biopolitics & Technology, Feminist Legal Theory & Gender Justice, Plural Legal Systems & Non-state Norms

Publication

Mehla, L., Mehla, A., Jha, A.K. et al. Steering Information Disorder Nexus: A Power Theorisation. Inf Syst Front (2026).

Mehla, A., & Mehla, L. (2025). The Palestinian homo sacer: Examining the disparity towards casualties of Israel/Palestine and Russia/Ukraine wars. Media Asia, 53(2), 575–582.

Mehla, A., & Mehla, L. (2025, May 24). Identity vs identification: Surveillance through family ID. Economic & Political Weekly, 60(21).

Mehla, A., & Mehla, L. (2024). The Telecommunications Act, 2023: Solidarity between democracy & totalitarianism. Statute Law Review, 45(2), hmae032.

Mehla, A. (2024). Ban on beauty parlour in Taliban-led Afghanistan: A question of deconstructing antipodal strands. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 26(5), Article 5.

Mehla, A. (2024). New criminal laws: Postcolonial or nationalist? Economic & Political Weekly, 59(6).

Bhattacharya, S., Mookherjee, U. K., & Mehla, A. (2024). Forests at the crossroads of indigeneity & bureaucracy: Some musings about forest governance in India. In Proceedings of the NDIEAS-2024 International Symposium on New Dimensions and Ideas in Environmental Anthropology-2024 (NDIEAS 2024). Atlantis Press.

Bhattacharya, S., Mookherjee, U. K., Mehla, A., & Mitra, A. (2022). Exclusion of Muslim minorities from the Indian discourse on reservation: A critical study. BiLD Law Journal, 7(4s).