PROFILE
Advocate Mrs. Meera Kaura Patel (Legal Head)
Meera Kaura Patel is a
successful and dedicated litigating lawyer practicing in
Supreme Court of India, Delhi High Court and Delhi District
Courts. Mrs. Patel’s main practice areas are Criminal Law,
Civil Law, Family/Matrimonial Law, Corporate Laws,
Intellectual Property, Commercial Arbitration and
Litigation, Immigration Law, Human Rights, etc. Mrs. Patel
has done her bachelors in Arts (Hons.) English literature
from University of Delhi in 2002 followed by a Baccalaureate
of Laws form Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, and
University of Delhi in 2006. She enrolled as an advocate
with the Bar Council of India in 2006 and commenced
practicing as an Advocate with Mr. Ramesh Gupta, Senior
Advocate who is practicing on the criminal side. Passionate
about law and in pursuit of higher academic brilliance, she
got herself enrolled in Masters of Law programme at Faculty
of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada and successfully
completed the same in 2008. She also worked as Senior Legal
Consultant at Agha & Co., Dubai, and handled various
matters pertaining to corporate/commercial arbitrations and
litigation. She is also a Partner in Law Circle which is a
multi-speciality law firm. Thereafter, she returned to India
to establish her independent legal practice in Delhi.
Apart from her flourishing
legal practice as a litigating lawyer, Mrs. Patel has been
associated with SAVE as an Honorary Legal Head for the last
eight years. Since her association with SAVE, she has played
multiple roles in the organisation, including but not
limited to creating awareness amongst necessary stakeholders
and victims about ragging and ragging related
regulations/laws by speaking at various conferences,
counselling, guiding and representing victims of ragging,
initiating legal proceedings against errant production
houses/TV programs that eulogised acts of ragging, guiding
and supervising volunteers on legal aspects who are
responsible for filing RTIs and who are counselling victims
on a regular basis, etc.
Mrs. Patel’s eight year’s
journey with SAVE has been very difficult as well as
inspiring. In her initial years, she was responsible for
issuing legal notices to and filing various complaints with
the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting against
various TV Channels in relation to some TV shows which
exhibited behaviours similar to ragging. Her relentless
campaign against a chocolate giant and against a reputed
production house for an advertisement that somewhat
eulogised the concept of ‘Ragging’ in hostel life,
ultimately led to removal of that advertisement from Indian
television through intervention of Advertising Standards
Council of India.
After the enactment of UGC
Regulations on Curbing the Menace of Ragging, 2009, Mrs.
Patel has counselled various victims and owing to her active
involvement with the cases, she is mindful of the various
lacunas that exist in the UGC Regulations as well as various
other state legislations on the subject of ragging. As such,
she even filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Hon’ble
Supreme Court of India in 2014, which unfortunately the
Hon’ble Court did not entertain at that time in view of the
existing legal framework. She intends to again approach the
Hon’ble Supreme Court in future when the time is ripe.
Mrs. Patel is an expert on laws
& regulations relating to ragging and as such, she is
frequently invited to seminars and conferences aimed at
educating various stakeholders like fresher students, senior
students, university staff, faculty, heads of institutions,
etc. She was recently invited by
National Human Rights
Commission as a panel expert speaker at an
anti-ragging program organised in Kochi, Kerala [
link].
She very recently enlightened many students as a technical
panel speaker in a conference organised by Govt. Women
Engineering College, Ajmer, Rajasthan, which was also
attended by Hon’ble Mr. Justice Deepak Maheshwari, High
Court of Rajasthan.
Owing to her active involvement
for the cause of Ragging, Mrs. Patel has also been covered
by a lot of news channels and newspapers, some of them being
the
Times of India [
example1]
[
example
2] , the
Deccan herald [
example],
the
Telegraph India [
example],
the Indian Express [
example]
etc.
She has been quoted as follows:
“Not
only is our attitude towards ragging complacent, our laws
too on this menace are slack. Lawyer Meera Kaura Patel
says, “In the absence of a central law, the accused are
booked under milder sections of the IPC like causing hurt
and wrongful restraint.”
Also,” she continues, “
Strict action needs to be
taken against institutions where incidents of ragging are
routine.
”
”
”
Contact:
Chamber: 126, Lawyers’
Chambers, R.K. Jain Block,
Supreme Court of India, New Delhi – 110001.
Law Offices: B 343, New Friends Colony, Delhi.
Mobile: (+91) 9910002111
Email: meera@lawcircle.in
