Prof Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor of National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, has been awarded the Infosys Prize for 2022 in the Humanities category.
According to a press release, the prize was awarded to him for for his insightful understanding of the Indian Constitution, especially his carefully argued account of the importance of the landmark ‘basic structure doctrine’ adopted by the Supreme Court in 1973. His account "guides and constrains various efforts to amend it, while also ensuring its stability in the face of executive and legislative outcomes in India’s political life," the release stated.
Prof Krishnaswamy is the third legal academic to win this prize after the late Prof Shamnad Basheer in 2014 and Lawrence Liang in 2017.
The Infosys Prize celebrates the achievements of the recipients and awards them for their contributions to science and research impacting India. The prize for each category comprises a gold medal, a citation, and a prize purse of USD 100,000. This year's event was held at the Infosys Science Foundation’s new office in Bengaluru.
Prof Krishnaswamy graduated in BA.LL.B. from NLSIU in 1998. He has been a Teaching Fellow in Law at the Pembroke College at Oxford University, an Assistant Professor at NLSIU, a Professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, and a faculty member at the Azim Premji University in Bangalore. He was appointed as Vice-Chancellor of NLSIU in 2019.
He is also the co-founder of Centre for Law & Policy Research (CLPR), a research organisation based in Bangalore.