The Centre for Child and the Law (CCL), NLSIU in collaboration with ALERT and CRAF, Andhra Pradesh organised a two-day consultation on “Exploring State Rules to Strengthen the Implementation of the National Food Security Act, 2013 in South India – with a Focus on Andhra Pradesh” on February 18-19^, 2026, at Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh.

Over 35 civil society organisation (CSO) representatives from five southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka participated in this consultation. The main purpose of the two-day consultation was conducting sessions on the present State Rules under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, initiating deliberations on the NFSA Model Rules developed by CCL through detailed analysis and comparison of the respective State Rules.

The consultation was a success as the CSOs actively participated in the group discussions and made further commitments to collaborate with CCL to carry forward the dialogue with respective stakeholders towards strengthening the NFSA State Rules through state specific strategic action plan. Representatives from Kerala proposed engaging in dialogue with Members of Parliament (MPs) and Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) to strengthen provisions for women empowerment and role of local authorities in the Kerala State Rules. Similarly, representatives from Andhra Pradesh CSOs plan to initiate interdepartmental convergence and dialogue with government stakeholders to strengthen the rules and increase government accountability and transparency in the grievance redressal mechanisms and social audit for all entitlements under NFSA. CSO members from Telangana committed to take forward a bottom-up evidence-based approach in their advocacy action plan to strengthen the State Rules. They aim towards formation of vigilance committees under NFSA provisions at select districts, then further document grassroots impact created by vigilance committees in ensuring right to food in those districts and present it to the government stakeholders to influence them to bolster the rules and implementation. Tamil Nadu plans to include Tamil Nadu Food Security Rules, 2017 specific recommendations in the collective CSO manifesto to engage with MPs and MLAs in light of the upcoming state elections this year.

zAs an outcome of the deliberations, way forward and continuing the momentum, CSOs proposed formation of a South India level network on Right to Food with State level Conveners. CSOs look forward to CCL’s support through technical expertise to conduct socio-legal research, policy analysis and establishing institutional linkages to vitalize the journey towards ensuring right to food for all and leave no one behind.

On February 14-15, 2026, the Theory & Practice of Social Accountability Project at NLSIU hosted a two-day consultation titled ‘Strengthening Accountability Systems: Reflections, Innovations, and Collective Action’ at the University campus. The event was jointly organised by nine civil society organisations:

• Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research (SAFAR)
• Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)
• LibTech India
• Foundation for Ecological Security (FES)
• Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA)
• Land Conflict Watch (LCW)
• Alternative Law Forum (ALF)
• Campaign for Judicial Accountability & Judicial Reforms (CJAR)
• National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR)

The trimester break, generally a quiet time on campus, became a lively space for civil society organisations, scholars, and practitioners to come together, reflect, and think out loud. The consultation reflected on practical interventions to strengthen public accountability—from social audits and grievance redress to proactive disclosure and transparency across a range of sectors from policing to technology for welfare to elections. It brought together nearly 200 practitioners, researchers, bureaucrats, frontline functionaries, and citizens to share experiences and develop a shared agenda for citizen oversight. The NLSIU library also saw exhibitions and stalls from the co-organisers and other civil society organisations.

The morning of Day 1 opened with a plenary session which set the tone for the two-day gathering. The panel had Hon’ble Justice Dr. Ashok B. Hinchigeri (Law Commission of Karnataka), Rebecca Mathai (Deputy CAG), Yashovardhan Jha Azad (former CIC), and Beena Pallical (NCDHR). The session included remarks from Prof. (Dr.) Sudhir Krishnaswamy,Vice-Chancellor, NLSIU who called for a focus on accountability of markets and capital alongside the state. The session was moderated by Dr. Anindita Adhikari (Assistant Professor, Social Science, NLSIU).

Following a break, participants transitioned between classrooms & conference rooms for three parallel roundtables: ‘Algorithmic Accountability in Welfare and Identity Systems’, ‘Electoral Accountability: Social Audit of Electoral Rolls and Protecting Voter Rights’, and ‘Frontlines of Social Accountability: Everyday Practices, Patterns, and Potential Effects on Empowerment and Local Governance.’ Despite the parallel tracks, some sessions were overflowing, with extra chairs being pulled in to accommodate the turnout.  These sessions were respectively led by Nutgraph Social Data Lab, the Alternative Law Forum (ALF), and Sham Kashyap (Azim Premji University).

In between the sessions, people broke into little huddles to carry on the conversations. The afternoon featured four concurrent roundtable discussions:

• ‘Ecological Accountability: Who Decides, Who Benefits, Who Bears the Costs?’ (Organised by FES)
• ‘Financial Accountability: Reclaiming Oversight of Public Credit and Ethical Investment’ (Organised by CFA)
• ‘Judicial Accountability: How People Can Hold Judges and the Judiciary Accountable?’ (Organised by CJAR)
• ‘Grievance Redress Systems and The Right to Be Heard’ (Organised by SAFAR)

The overflowing lunch mess saw people discussing the roundtables late into the afternoon. Following each roundtable, 60-minute workshops were held to reflect on the discussions and develop common action plans. The day concluded with a moving musical performance at the NLSIU Amphitheatre by Shilpa Mudbi and Kalaburgi Kala Mandali.

Day 2 saw over 100 participants arrive on Sunday morning, with several new faces joining the group to resume the dialogue. The day opened with a plenary on ‘International Experiences with Social Accountability,’ featuring Hussain Khaled (CEO, Vocal Africa, Kenya), Shireen (Director, The Social Architects, Sri Lanka), Narayan Adhikari (South Asia Representative, Accountability Lab, Nepal), and Nikhil Dey (MKSS, India). The panel was moderated by Dr. Anindita Adhikari (NLSIU).

Following the format of the previous day, the plenary was followed by a set of parallel roundtables:

• RTI, DPDPA, and the Integrity of Public Data (Organised by SAFAR and MKSS)
• Police Accountability: Community Action to Safeguard Civil Liberties (Organised by Ameya Bokil and Devyani Srivastava)
• Forest Rights Act and the Future of Democratic Forest Governance (Organised by Land Conflict Watch)

The second set of roundtables included:

• Governance and Technology Design Failures in Aadhaar: Legal and Welfare Implications (Organised by LibTech)
• Accountability for Nomadic and DNT Communities (Organised by Olakhaan)
• Tenant and Women Farmers, Misplaced Benefits, and the Accountability Crisis in Agriculture (Organised by Rhythu Swarajya Vedika and Kisan Mitra)

Each roundtable was followed by an afternoon workshop to distill the discussions into actionable goals.

The diversity of the sessions was mirrored by the participants themselves. Alongside the co-organisers, the two-day consultation drew a wide spectrum of representatives from CSOs and academic institutions, as well as students and researchers. This included active participation from CIVIC Bangalore, IIHS, ISEC, APU, Indus Action, IT for Change, Agami, ATREE, Dakshin Foundation, Enfold, NAJAR, and GramVani, alongside members of the Gig Worker Union and Anganwadi Worker Union.

The two-day consultation concluded with a closing plenary where co-organisers and session leads shared takeaways from the workshops. This panel consisted of Rakshita Swamy (SAFAR), Kumar Sambhav (LCW), Paras Banjara (Olakhan), Sameet Kumar Panda (LibTech), Alok Prasanna (CJAR), Amitanshu (CFA), Harsha (RSV & Kisan Mitra), Devyani Srivastava (NLSIU), Bhaskar (FES), and Carina (SAFAR), moderated by Nikhil Dey.

As the closing plenary reflected on the range of themes covered over the two days, a participant remarked that the gathering had truly felt like an ‘accountability mela’—suggesting that such a space for dialogue should become an annual tradition to keep the momentum of collective reflection and action alive.

Know More About the Conference

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Faculty

Ms Faiza Rahman
Assistant Professor – Law

Faiza Rahman’s teaching and research interests include constitutional law and theory, administrative and regulatory laws, and media and technology law and policy.

Prior to joining NLSIU, Faiza served as a teaching fellow in the free speech and media law course at Melbourne Law School. In India, she has worked for over six years across research, public policy and practice. She was a research fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi, where she worked on areas of technology law and regulatory governance. She has also worked as a research fellow with the public law and judicial reforms verticals at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi. Before venturing into research and academia, Faiza worked as an associate in the capital markets practice at Luthra & Luthra Law Offices, Mumbai.

Faiza was awarded a full scholarship by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies to pursue the BCL at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

She can be reached at .

Mr. John Sebastian
Assistant Professor – Law

John Sebastian’s general research and teaching interests cover the areas of legal and political theory, constitutional law, criminal law and administrative law. He has published on a range of issues in these areas.

His PhD research at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, focusses on the special rights of linguistic and religious minorities in the Indian Constitution, and analyses the manner in which the Constitution engages with the many conflicting interests and values underlying the legal recognition of these identities.

Prior to joining NLSIU, John taught legal theory in the Juris Doctor programme at Melbourne Law School for three years. Before this, he was at OP Jindal University for over four years, where he taught constitutional law, criminal law and administrative law courses. Earlier, he worked as a law clerk and research assistant to Justice Madan B Lokur in the Supreme Court of India for a year. While doing his BCL from the University of Oxford, John was awarded the Tobias Law Prize.

He can be reached at .

Ms. Mihika Poddar
Assistant Professor – Law

Mihika’s research interests include, Human Rights Law and Policy, Discrimination Law, Queer and Feminist Legal Theory, Law and Society, Constitutional law, Criminal Law.

She is a DPhil candidate in law at the University of Oxford, where she is undertaking research on legal recognition of personal identities, including race, sex/gender and caste.

Mihika obtained the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) with Distinction on a Rhodes Scholarship. She is also a qualified lawyer and university medallist from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), India, where she completed her B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) in 2019.

She has been a tutor and lecturer in English Criminal Law and Feminist Perspectives in Law at the University of Oxford, University College London, and Catholic University of Lille, Paris.

She can be reached at .

Dr Sony Pellissery was a speaker at the Delhi Development Authority’s (DDA) Green Expo, held on February 14–15, 2026. The theme of the two-day Expo was “Beyond Growth: Reimagining Urban Futures.”

Session on Development vs. Conservation: Finding a Middle Path

During the Expo, Professor Sony participated in a panel discussion titled “Development vs. Conservation: Finding a Middle Path.”

For the panel, Prof Sony was joined by:

• Mr. Davinder Sandhu, Chairperson of Primus Partners (the Knowledge Partner for DDA Green Expo 2026)
• Ms. Shubhi Kesarwani, CEO of Gurujal Foundation
• Mr. Nikhil Dhar of IES College of Architecture, Mumbai

Professor Sony’s intervention was focussed on how development doctrine evolved from conceptualising cities as vehicles of growth to cities as spaces to realise justice. The latter focus is what is called New Urbanism. In other words, New Urbanism recognises the failures of traditional city-focussed growth models. Urban Planning as a profession has to prioritise whether the exercise is to build cities for growth or to build cities of spatial justice. Traditionally, planning as an instrument borrowed colonial models and focused on making aesthetic cities (to attract capital), to make cities look modern (contrasted to traditional countryside), and functional differentiation (as business areas, residential areas and industrial locations) within city. These three functions primarily served the interests of markets. Within intensified markets exchanges through globalisation, cities across the world began to look alike. This led to loss of ecological character of cities. Ecological crisis is an invitation to restore the ecological character of cities.

Professor Sony in his intervention pointed at requirements of such transformation as a typical example of obsession with infrastructure. Focus on urban infrastructure (at the expense of environment), has the logic of financial markets. He said: “Neglecting urban economy and focussing on infrastructure is like spending on a shiny front door of a leaking and disorderly house”.

His inputs were drawn from his book chapter “A Grammar for Transformative Urbanism.”

About the Summit

The first-ever “DDA Green Expo 2026” was organised at Baansera, Birsa Munda Chowk, New Delhi which was transformed into public park from a mountain looking heap of debris of Delhi Metro construction on the Yamuna Floodplains.

Anchored in the theme “Beyond Growth – Reimagining Urban Futures,” the expo aimed to promote sustainable and climate-resilient urban development. It highlighted how ecological restoration, green infrastructure, and nature-based solutions can transform cities into healthier, more liveable spaces. The event brought together policymakers, urban planners, environmental experts, academic institutions, industry leaders, and citizens to showcase innovative practices in urban greening, biodiversity conservation, and climate-adaptive planning. Through exhibitions, expert sessions, and interactive activities, the expo fostered collaboration, public awareness, and action toward a greener future. It reflected Delhi’s commitment to creating resilient, inclusive, and environmentally conscious urban spaces for generations to come.

The participants showcased innovations and shared knowledge on topics like:

The Centre for Child and the Law (CCL) at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru is inviting applications for a Certificate Course on ‘Understanding and Advancing Food and Nutrition Security,’ designed for CSO and NGO representatives, right to food practitioners, and individuals working to advance food and nutrition security in India.

This course combines academic rigor with a deep conceptual understanding of real-world challenges integrating research, teaching and field action to advance food and nutrition security, legal empowerment and social justice for children from marginalised communities.

The course will cover:

▪️ Conceptual and normative approaches to the Right to Food
▪️International normative frameworks
▪️Evolution of the Right to Food discourse in India
▪️Situational analysis of food and nutrition security
▪️Domestic legal and policy frameworks
▪️Nutrition Governance and public accountability mechanisms
▪️Approaches to advocacy for food and nutrition security

Learning outcomes:

It equips participants with the knowledge to operationalise laws in food-insecure societies, bridging theory with practical application through interactive and immersive learning, hands-on legal and policy insights and exclusive access to NLSIU’s expertise.

Course format:

This is a 3-month hybrid course beginning in April 2026. Participants will attend an in-person induction session and a three-day in-person session at NLSIU, Bengaluru, in addition to the scheduled weekly online sessions (Thursdays 4 to 6 pm).

Applications are now open. Apply through the google form link here: https://forms.gle/2d9vTgojqyUCsh2T9.

There is no course fee. Travel and accommodation sponsorship is available on request.

Please note that the language of instruction will primarily be in English with Hindi support. All resource materials for the course will be in English.

Apply by: March 7, 2026

In case of any queries please write to .

A team from the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru comprising Prof. (Dr.) Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor; Dr. Devyani Pande, Assistant Professor, Public Policy; Mr. Amlan Mohanty, Non-Resident Fellow at Niti Aayog and Visiting Faculty at NLS and Mr Rahul Matthan, Visiting Faculty at NLS is participating at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 beginning in Delhi today. 

Prof Krishnaswamy spoke at a panel discussion on Monday, February 16, 2026, titled ‘The Governance Gap: Designing Global Standards for AI Advisory Boards,’ which was hosted by the Oversight Board. His co-panellists were Saurabh Karn, Founding Member, Saravm AI and Julie Owono, Executive Director, Internet Sans Frontières. The panel explored minimum requirements for AI governance bodies and how ethical decision-making structures can function across companies of all sizes. The session explored lessons on structural independence, transparency, and human rights frameworks.

📹Watch the session video here. (via @IndiaAI)

Pre-Summit Official Events Hosted by NLSIU

NLSIU has been actively shaping conversations on AI governance in the lead-up to the Summit. It hosted two official pre-Summit events held at the University campus in Bengaluru in January. 

The events were organised by the JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU with the support of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

The first event, held on January 17, featured a Keynote Address by Dr. Akash Kapur, Visiting Research Scholar and Lecturer, Princeton University. In his lecture titled “AI in the Global South: DPI as an AI Governance Approach,” he examined AI governance in the Global South, with a focus on India and how a DPI-led approach aligns with broader global regulatory models.

The second event, held on January 24, was a panel discussion on AI Governance in the Global South. The session reflected on India’s newly released AI guidelines and explored emerging governance patterns across the Global South, bringing together experts from industry, policy, and academia.

The programme also featured discussions on the transformation of the regulatory landscape, emergent use cases for generative AI tools in automation, and the ethical and professional responsibilities surrounding access and bias.

Panellists included Mr. Amlan Mohanty, Non-Resident Fellow at Niti Aayog and Visiting Faculty at NLS;  Mr. Prakash Narayanan, Global General Counsel, L&T Technology Services (LTTS); Ms. Eunice Huang, Head of AI and Emerging Tech Policy, Asia Pacific, Google; Mr. Jaideep Reddy, Partner, Trilegal; Prof. Rahul De’, Independent Consultant and Researcher; Retired Professor & Former Dean at IIM-Bangalore; Prof. (Dr.) Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor, NLSIU and Dr. Rahul Hemrajani, Assistant Professor of Law (Moderator). 

Here’s a glimpse of the two events.

Recent Publications by NLS faculty on AI

• India’s AI Moment: Global South Needs to Set Rules, Not Just Host Summit 
• ChatGPT Goes to (National)Law School
• Conceptualising Public Trust in High-Risk AI Policymaking: A Comparative Analysis of Three Asian Cities  
• Is Artificial Intelligence affecting critical thinking skills? | Parley
• We are all data for AI. We must learn to coexist
• An Empire of Artificial Intelligence: Exploring an Intersection of Politics, Society, and Creativity