Dr. Colin Gonsalves is the Founder of Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), India’s leading public interest law group.  Upon attaining his law degree in 1983, he co-founded the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) and developed it into a national organization bringing together over 200 lawyers and paralegals operating out of 28 offices spread throughout India. Dr. Gonsalves transitioned his practice from the Labour Courts to the Bombay High Court in 1984 and was designated as Senior Advocate, before moving onto the Supreme Court of India in 2000. He has brought numerous precedent-setting cases to the Supreme Court and the High Courts of various states. Amongst these cases was the “Right to Food” case in the Supreme Court of India which ordered subsidized grains to be given to 700 million poor persons. He has written, edited and co-edited a number of articles and books on a range of human rights law issues.  He was presented with the “International Human Rights Award” by the American Bar Association in 2005. In 2010, he was conferred a Doctorate of the University, honoris causa, by the University of Middlesex, UK. He was given the “Mother Teresa Memorial Award” for Social Justice “in recognition of remarkable contribution in legal services addressing human rights” in 2010 and an Award of the Centre for Reproductive Rights, New York, 2015 – for Pioneering and Exemplary Leadership in Advancing Women’s Reproductive Rights and Social Justice in India. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award 2017. Most recently Dr. Gonsalves was involved in two important climate change cases, the Chardham case in the Himalayas and the coastal road case in Mumbai, a series of important abortion rights cases, the premature release of prisoners who were incarcerated for long periods of time, in cases involving non-violent social activists who were granted statutory bail, the demolition of the houses of the poor at Haldwani which were stayed by the Supreme Court, a series of petitions done during the Covid period on health rights, cases on behalf of migrant workers who were forced to leave the cities and walk hundreds of kms to their villages, the social boycott of Dalits in the state of Haryana, the protection of farmers rights, the protection of tribals across India who were threatened with mass eviction and so on. For more about Dr. Gonsalves see (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Gonsalves ).