Advocate, Supreme Court of India, | Independent Advocate registered with the Bar Council of Delhi, and a Member of the Supreme Court Bar Association (Non-voting), | India
V. SHRUTI DEVI, an Advocate registered with the Bar Council of Delhi since 1997, is an
Independent Advocate and Legal Consultant in India, specializing in Environmental,
Constitutional and Biodiversity Law. She began her legal career as an Advocate Trainee in the
chambers of an Additional Solicitor General of India in the Supreme Court in 1997, Senior
Advocate, V. R. Reddy. She was an India Visiting Environmental Law Fellow to the USA in 1998,
returned to India to work briefly in the chambers of an Advocate on Record in the Supreme
Court, now Former Justice of the Supreme Court, Ms. Indu Malhotra, before establishing an
independent pro bono practice as an Advocate, Supreme Court of India.
Shruti Devi was a Member of the Technical and Policy Core Group of India’s National
Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) process from 2000 – 2003 as an Independent
Legal Expert. This was a United Nations project conducted via the Ministry of Environment and
Forests, Government of India, and was a part of an international process that flowed from India’s
commitments in the International Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which was one of the
results of the Eart Summit held at Rio De Janeiro in 1992. As a part of India’s NBSAP process,
Shruti contributed to the participatory creation of a plethora of reports, vision documents and
strategy and action plans through her policy analysis and legislative interpretative skills and,
indeed, via her grassroots outreach to enhance the participatory nature of the process.
As an international legal consultant, her work has ranged from special research for Butterworths
Legal Publishers, to being an India Monitor for the Global Forest Coalition on aspects of Climate
Change, to advising Winrock International India on medicinal plants and intellectual property.
She is the author of six books across genres, which have won international acclaim and awards,
have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and received Certificates of Honour from the
Supreme Court of India. She employs theatre, art, free-lance writing in mainstream print and
digital media, and social media to take law to the masses, and dabbles in guitar-playing and tarot
reading, and has won a Delhi state team gold medal for rifle shooting in her student days.
V. Shruti Devi is currently an elected Member of the All India Congress Committee (AICC). She
formally joined the INC in December 1998 and worked almost full-time for the INC party without
posts for fifteen years before rising in the party’s ranks over the next twelve years. Her work from
2004 – 2014 was concurrent with ten years of the INC-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
government, (and her father’s fifth and sixth terms as a Member of Parliament, his chairmanship
of key parliamentary committees, and eventually, his ministership in Prime Minister Dr
Manmohan Singh’s cabinet), and involved making cutting-edge legal and politico-legal advice
available in a free and timely manner on a day-to-day basis, to members of parliament, ministers,
grassroot party workers, community-based organizations and non-government organizations,
think tanks, the general citizenry at large, members of the opposition parties, as well as to
players in the judicial and legislative processes. Shruti Devi’s most prominent or measurable
contribution by way of legal advice in the legislative arena has been towards the crafting and
peaceful passage of the historic Forest Rights Act, ie., the Scheduled Tribes and Other
Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006. Shruti also took on the
task of keeping a sharp legal eye on the balance of power between the executive and the
judiciary in all portfolios and across the board.
Born in Madras (Chennai), in Tamil Nadu, India, in 1972, Shruti is a citizen of India, and the
Princess of Kurupam. Honesty, frugality, struggles to uphold democratic values, and love for the
people have distinguished this royal family of tribal chiefs that stands by India’s secular and
democratic principles. An accomplished student leader who held posts, ran for elections, and
won several accolades for her institutions, V. Shruti Devi was educated in Mater Dei School,
New Delhi, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, Campus Law Centre, Delhi University, and Centre for
Environmental Law – WWF India, New Delhi, earning a B.A. (Honours) in English Literature, a law
degree, LL.B., and a post-graduate Diploma in Environmental Law. Her ancestral real estate
enables her to invest her resources for pro bono legal work. She is not an official spokesperson
of her party.
