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Arghya Sengupta (born 1984) is an Indian lawyer and legal scholar, and the founder and research director of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, an independent think tank based in New Delhi.[1][2][3][4] He is the author of three books, most recently The Colonial Constitution, and has written extensively on the intersections of law, politics, and public policy.
Sengupta has served on several prominent committees constituted by the Government of India, including the Justice B. N. Srikrishna Committee on Data Protection, as well as by the Supreme Court of India, such as the sub-committee for Phase III of the e-Courts project.[5][6][7][8] He is also a regular columnist for The Times of India and The Telegraph, where he writes on issues of law and governance.[9]
While completing his studies at Oxford, Sengupta, along with a few colleagues, responded to a call for public comments on the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill.[12] Their objective, as he later described in a public interview, was to make the law “clear, coherent, constitutional, contemporaneous and compliant,” drawing not only on international best practices but also on the practical capacities of the Indian state.[20] This experience laid the foundation for the idea of Vidhi, established with the mission of drafting better laws for India—anchored in the belief that "better laws enable better governance."[21][22][23]
Vidhi began in New Delhi in 2013 with a team of six lawyers.[24] As of 2024, the team has grown to 82 lawyers with offices in New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai. Since its inception, Vidhi has worked with the Central Government as well as several State Governments in drafting over 400 laws, rules, and regulations.[25][26][27][28][29]
A 2020 Caravan article highlighted concerns about Vidhi’s “questionable role in technology-related policymaking."[30] It pointed out that the organisation had contributed to the drafting of major laws tied to data collection and surveillance, including the Aadhaar Act (2016), the GST law, the FRDI Bill, the Personal Data Protection Bill, and the Aarogya Setu Data Access Protocol (2020). These connections, the article suggested, raise potential conflicts of interest. For example, in 2017, Sengupta represented the government in court, arguing against the recognition of privacy as a fundamental right, even as he and Vidhi were simultaneously engaged in preparing the draft data protection law under the BN Srikrishna Committee.[30][31]
Views on the Indian Constitution
Sengupta has written a book titled The Colonial Constitution (Juggernaut, 2023), which arrived as an intentionally provocative intervention in recent debates about the Indian Constitution’s origins.[32][33][34][35] Its central claim, that the Constitution of independent India is not a radical break from colonial constitutionalism but rather inherits and reproduces many features of the Government of India Act, 1935, has been the focal point of most responses.[36][37][38] Reviewers and commentators across law journals, popular media, policy blogs, and academic fora have engaged with the book’s evidence, tone and implications in ways that together map a lively, sometimes sharply divided reception.[39][40][41] According to the historianFaisal Devji, the book “is part of a longer intellectual tradition, going back to at least the 1990s, when you have the desanctification of the nation, where you have a whole lot of new historical scholarship that questions the idea of the nation itself — that doesn’t seem to have created as much fuss as any attack on the Constitution has, which is an interesting question.”[42]
Among academic reviewers, Sengupta’s book has been widely praised for its archival attention and for making a complex institutional history accessible to a broad readership.[43] Reviewers in legal journals and university discussion groups have noted that the book’s strongest contribution is its careful tracing of institutional continuities, i.e., administrative structures, legislative techniques, and even specific constitutional provisions, from the Government of India Act, 1935 into large swathes of the 1950 Constitution. A review in the International Journal of Law in Context observed the value of a succinct historical-legal account that places the Constitution’s procedural and structural features in their imperial genealogy, while also commending the book’s readable style that makes specialised material available to non-specialists.[44]
But many of the most sustained critiques have targeted the book’s framing and selectivity. Some reviewers have argued that calling the Constitution “colonial” is rhetorically effective but analytically slippery: it risks collapsing a complex process of adaptation, contestation and political choice into a simple line of descent. For instance, an Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) review typifies this strand of criticism: while acknowledging the potency of Sengupta’s archival claims, it faulted the book for an “incomplete history” that at points underplays the agency and political stakes of the constitution-makers and for a title that primes readers for a polarised reception.[45] Critics in this vein ask for more attention to why framers accepted or rejected particular colonial legacies (political strategy, social compromise, exigencies of partition), rather than presenting continuity as the dominant explanatory variable.[46]
Other scholarly critiques focus on method. A number of reviewers suggested that the book emphasises legal textual continuity at the cost of social and political context.[46] For instance, it gives less space to debates about social justice, agrarian reform, linguistic federalism, and mass politics that shaped the new polity. These commenters accept that many provisions or drafting techniques derive from colonial statutes but argue that continuity in form does not automatically imply continuity in purpose or meaning, and argue for a deeper engagement with countervailing evidence and alternative explanations.
Outside academic journals, The Colonial Constitution has been read through partisan lenses. Some conservative and pro-establishment commentators have used Sengupta’s account to bolster narratives that the Constitution was a pragmatic, even prudent, inheritance, and in a few cases to push back against calls for radical constitutional reform.[47] Conversely, progressive commentators and activists have found in the book ammunition for arguments that India’s post-colonial state preserves structural authoritarian capacities that need to be dismantled or reformed.[48]Countercurrents and other outlets framed the book as an important spur for an urgent conversation on “decolonizing” the Constitution, as a diagnosis that should lead to normative and institutional proposals for democratisation.[49]
Media-law outlets and popular legal websites provided mixed but substantive engagement.[50][51] Bar & Bench’s review, for example, paired Sengupta’s book with other contemporary constitutional commentaries, such as by scholars like Gautam Bhatia, evaluating its readability and practical relevance for lawyers and policy practitioners while noting that its polemical title invites intense debate rather than quiet scholarly consensus.[52]
Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association and others vs. Union of India, where he argued in favour of the constitutionality of the Constitution (Ninety-ninth Amendment) Act, 2014, which had established the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC).[56][57]
Legal reform work
Sengupta has advised various Ministries of the Government of India on several prominent legislations, including:
Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, 2016.
The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits, and Services) Act, 2016.
The Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018.
The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (Amendment) Act, 2018.
The Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Act, 2019.
"Judicial Independence and the Appointment of Judges to the Higher Judiciary in India: A Conceptual Enquiry." Indian Journal of Constitutional Law, 5, 2011.[71]
"Confessions in the Custody of a Police Officer: Is it the Opportune Time for Change?" National Law School of India Review, 18(1), Article 5, 2006.[72]
Edited Volumes
The Working of the Indian Constitution.Routledge, 2024.[73]
Appointment of Judges to the Supreme Court of India: Transparency, Accountability and Independence.Oxford University Press, 2018.[17]
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