This is an excerpt from The Constitution Is My Home: Conversations on a Life in Law, by Senior Advocate Indira Jaising, with Ritu Menon (HarperCollins India, 2026).§My appointment as the additional solicitor general of India was exceptional in many ways, apart from my gender. I was the first woman from the Supreme Court bar to hold the position. I had a known record of work on human rights and, of course, gender justice. I was not a member of the ruling Congress party then, nor am I now. In fact, my background could easily have been seen as being at odds with State power. After all, rights are claimed against the State. So, I was as surprised as anyone when the appointment came through. To this day, I don’t really know which considerations went into it. I was on a flight from Delhi to Washington DC when I received a call from the Attorney General’s office – personally from the late Goolam E. Vahanvati – asking for my consent to be nominated for the post. The appointment of an additional solicitor general is made by the Cabinet Committee on Appointments and rests entirely at the government’s discretion. There are no rules or criteria for who should be appointed to the ASG position. Vahanvati knew me mainly from across the courtroom, as an opponent in the cases I had argued. He had represented Air India in the matters I took up on behalf of the air hostesses in the 1970s. It was deeply satisfying to learn that my opponents respected my legal acumen enough to trust me with the job, knowing full well my long-standing commitment to human rights and gender justice. It is important to put on record that law officers are not meant to be mouthpieces for the government they represent in court. Their role is to advise the government on the law, not the other way around. We appear for the government, yes, but that does not mean echoing its views or surrendering our independent judgement. The responsibility is to present the legal position with integrity, rather than mortgage one’s mind to the State. Law officers also have the privilege of being consulted on proposed policies and can advise on questions of legality whenever required. Bearing all this in mind, I agreed to my appointment […] There were times when I refused to take on cases that, in my view, went against the fundamental rights of people – cases defending ‘encounter deaths’, for example. Since there were multiple additional solicitors, those cases were simply assigned to someone else. But this is not an institutional solution. There should be room within the system to advise the government when it is acting against the rule of law.Cover of ‘Constitution Is My Home’. Photo: X/@IJaisingDuring my tenure, I wrote to the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, demanding removal from office of a former Supreme Court judge – then serving as the head of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission – for alleged acts of sexual harassment against an intern. It was not an easy position to take. Being an insider came with its own burden. The government sought the opinion of another additional solicitor general and concluded that the judge could be removed through due process and that the allegations merited investigation. But no investigation followed. When the judge resigned, I faced fierce opposition from within the bar. Colleagues rushed to defend the retired Supreme Court judge. ‘Why isn’t the intern filing a criminal prosecution?’ they asked. I responded that the choice of remedy was hers alone. The responsibility of the government was to investigate a credible accusation. This was not the only time I had to speak out on allegations of sexual harassment made by interns against former judges of the Supreme Court. My insistence on accountability was seen by some as unbecoming of a law officer. But for me, it was a continuation of my work as a practising lawyer. I saw it as a core duty of any law officer—to protect the rights of women at work. Among criminal matters, I represented the CBI in prosecuting several police officers implicated in the murders of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi during the Gujarat riots in 2005. It was alleged that Sheikh was a wanted criminal who had been shot in an encounter while he was on the run. It was the same case in which the then home minister of Gujarat and current union home minister, Amit Shah, was an accused. I opposed bail for several high-ranking Gujarat police officers. Despite being represented by some of the best lawyers in the country, they did not secure bail. I remember one case in particular, where I opposed bail all the way from the magistrate’s court to the Supreme Court. The officer in question arrived at the magistrate’s court in an ambulance, accompanied by his astrologer, hoping to secure a favourable decision. The magistrate denied bail. So did the Supreme Court. I recount this because I believe that this very case later became the basis for my political targeting by the NDA government. In 2016, the FCRA registration of the Lawyers Collective was cancelled on what I believe were false and frivolous grounds.It was enough to mark me out as an ‘enemy’ of the ruling party. I resigned as when the 2014 election results were declared, in keeping with the tradition of allowing the incoming government to appoint its own law officers. After that, I returned to private practice and resumed my work in the field of human rights.I was now free to be my own person. After I returned to my private practice, I was asked to represent Sanjiv Bhatt, a police officer who had alleged that the chief minister of Gujarat during the 2002 riots – now the Prime Minister – had instructed the police to ‘go slow’. Bhatt was seeking an impartial inquiry into the allegations against him. The case was heard by Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice Arun Mishra. His request was denied.I believe my track record, particularly my role in opposing bail for police officers implicated in the Gujarat killings, was never forgotten by the ruling BJP. In time, it became another reason to target me.