LL.M Dissertation 2025-26

Permanent URI for this collection

http://dlnluassam.ndl.gov.in:4004/handle/123456789/987

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 47

Ease of Doing Business in Northeast India: Legal Analysis of Regulatory and Structural Barriers to Start-up Growth
(NLUJAA, 2026) Jagriti Priyadarshini Saikia
Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) has become an important part of economic governance and in many countries across the world. It refers to the government systems and administrative conditions that help businesses in establishment, operation and closure within a regulatory framework. Governments now increasingly view improvement of the business environment as necessary for helping businesses grow and attracting investment. It is also considered important for supporting business and economic growth. To improve the business environment, the Government of India introduced several legal and administrative reforms. These reforms included amendment of commercial laws, consolidation of labour legislation and digitization of regulatory approvals. The Government also introduced initiatives like the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023 for reducing compliance burden in business activities.
A Transnational Gavel: Magnitsky Sanctions and Whistleblower Protection in BPC Nexus States
(NLUJAA, 2026) Ishani Chatterjee
The term Bureaucratic-Political-Criminal (BPC) Nexus refers to a lasting structural amalgamation of state administrative machineries, political power and organised criminal organisations which transforms the formal state institutions into the channels of illicit accumulation and repression. It is not just breaches of corruption as the BPC Nexus characterises a systemic integration whereby rule-of-law functions (investigation, prosecution, regulation and adjudication) are under subordination to private or partisan interests. In this type of systems legal forms exist that serve merely as instruments; laws, procedures and state agencies serve to defend individual interests, or to cover expropriation, or to put off critics. In modern research other terms (state capture, kleptocracy, criminalisation of the state) are utilised to describe the same trend; theoretically, the key characteristic is the breakdown of institutional integrity and objectivity that the normal checks and balances assume. Legal protection of whistleblowers represents a principal mechanism to maintain the rule of law, institutional transparency, and mobilise domestic accountability structures that are geared towards identifying and preventing corruption and severe rightsviolations. Whistleblowing, as an internal remedy, enhances regulatory integrity and confidence of the population in systems where the reporting individuals are assured of independent investigative authority and impartial courts to act on their complaints. In other jurisdictions organised around a Bureaucratic-Political-Criminal (BPC) nexus, however, the institutional capture of whistleblower protection laws and control systems is often made ineffective by this capture.
A Legal Analysis of the Protection of Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Koch Rajbongshis Under the Intellectual Property Rights Regime
(NLUJAA, 2026) Haripriya Rajbongshi
Cultural heritage is the combined legacy of traditions, customs, body of knowledge and cultural manifestations that are preserved and passed down through generations within a community. It is one of the fundamental aspects of social identity and historical continuity. It reflects the value, beliefs and practices of a given community of people. Cultural heritage is broadly divided into two major categories; tangible and intangible heritage. Tangible cultural heritage entails physical and material manifestations of culture such as artifacts, traditional clothing, handicrafts, architectural structures, and other objects that reflect cultural identity of a people. Intangible cultural heritage on the other hand is non-material cultural expressions that are transmitted through generations mainly through oral expression and the participation of people.1 In a culturally diverse nation like India, indigenous and ethnic communities are a vital part in preserving such heritage. And this adds a significant contribution to the cultural richness and diversity of the nation.
Customary Tribal Law, Digital Identity (Aadhaar), and Constitutional Pluralism in India: Legal Challenges and Pathways for Harmonizing Collective Rights with Individual State Recognition.
(NLUJAA, 2026) Diksha Buragohain
This dissertation examines the constitutional and jurisprudential tensions arising at the intersection of customary tribal law, digital biometric identity (Aadhaar), and constitutional pluralism in India. India's constitutional framework is inherently pluralistic: it accommodates customary tribal governance through the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, recognises collective rights of Scheduled Tribes through reservations and protective legislation, and simultaneously advances a project of individual rights anchored in Part III. The advent of the Aadhaar system which is a biometric digital identity infrastructure that has introduced a new axis of tension, imposing a uniform, state-centric, individual-based identity paradigm upon communities whose identities are constitutively relational, community-embedded, and governed by customary norms.
Regulating Political Fake News in India: A Critical Analysis of Copyright Law and Intermediary Liability
(NLUJAA, 2026) Didarul Islam Laskar
This dissertation examines the growing issue of fake news, digital misinformation, and political propaganda in the context of the Indian electoral and democratic framework. The study primarily focuses on the influence of politically motivated misinformation on voter behaviour and public opinion during elections and political campaigns. It analyses the nature, forms, and methods through which fake political content is disseminated through digital platforms and social media intermediaries such as YouTube, Facebook, and X. The research further explores the applicability and effectiveness of the Copyright Act, 1957 and the Information Technology Act, 2000 in addressing unauthorized use, manipulation, and dissemination of political content, including speeches, campaign materials, videos, and media broadcasts. Particular emphasis is placed on intermediary liability under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Intermediary Guidelines governing digital platforms.
Copyrightability of AI-Generated Works: A Legal Analysis
(NLUJAA, 2026) Gopal Krishna
This raises a significant question whether a work generated through artificial intelligence meets the requirement of originality if it has less human interference or no human involvement? The artificial intelligence system is trained on human-created datasets, and the output generated is the outcome of a random process rather than conscious creative intent and consequently, the authorship of authorship becomes cryptic. Potential claimants include the programmers who have designed the algorithm, the user who provides prompts or the organization which owns the artificial intelligence system. All the stakeholders involved contribute in some or other way, but cannot fully satisfy the traditional criteria of authorship under the copyright law.
E-Consumer Rights in India: An Analysis of the Legal Protection Regime in online Business Transactions
(NLUJAA, 2026) Jeet Kumar Das
Historically, consumer protection has been an essential issue for legal systems around the globe. The conventional model of consumer safety, base donning person dealings in physical stores, has been significantly challenged by the intricacies of the online market. The United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection, initially established in 1985 and later updated in 2016, recognize the necessity for a strong framework to protect consumers in the digital landscape1. Likewise, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has provided particular guidelines focusing on consumer protection within the realm of e-commerce. The emergence of the internet and digital technologies has drastically changed how commerce is carried out worldwide. The rise of electronic commerce, often called ecommerce, has transformed conventional business models and created a completely new type of buyer the electronic consumer or e-consumer. India, being among the fastest growing digital economies globally, has experienced an unparalleled rise in online business dealings, highlighting numerous legal challenges that require thorough academic investigation.
Protection of Ritual-Based Traditional Knowledge Among the Karbi Community of Assam within Intellectual Property Rights Regime: A Socio-Legal Study
(NLUJAA, 2026) Manisha Teron
According to WIPO, “Traditional knowledge (TK) is knowledge, know-how, skills and practices that are developed, sustained and passed on from generation to generation within a community, often forming part of its cultural or spiritual identity”. And according to UNESCO, “Traditional Knowledge refers to the knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity”. Traditional Knowledge is the knowledge that has been acquired over time by members of an indigenous community in one or more societies through experience and exposure to the local culture and environment. In the past, it has always been an easy and simple to reach gem, which is sensitive to theft. One is the biological resource itself and second for what you cannot own inherently such as traditional knowledge related to that. It is one of those that usually gets handed down orally from generation to generation. This knowledge has been influenced over time by innovations and practices from previous generations.
Doctrinal Analysis of Debt Recovery Under the Sarfaesi Act and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016: Harmonisation, Overlaps, and Judicial Trends
(NLUJAA, 2026) Kenneth Borgayary
The dissertation examines the points of overlap, conflict, and duplication between the two statutes, especially with regard to Section 238 and the Section 14 moratorium, and tracks the development of debt collection law in India. It makes the case that the judicial approach shows convergence rather than displacement, citing important rulings such as Innoventive Industries v. ICICI Bank, Essar Steel, Swiss Ribbons, and Dhanlaxmi Bank v. Mohd. Javed Sultan. Over the past thirty years, Indian debt recovery law has changed significantly. From the prolonged delays of civil litigation to the organized frameworks of the SARFAESI Act, 2002 and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, and most recently, the reforms brought about by the IBC Amendment Act, 2026. While the IBC represents a communal, resolution-oriented strategy, the SARFAESI Act represents an individual, creditor-centric form of enforcement. This dissertation investigates the relationship between these two regimes and tests the theory that they are not fundamentally incompatible despite having different foundations.
Insider Trading Regulation and Enforcement in India: A Comprehensive Analysis of SEBI’S Enforcement Mechanism Framework
(NLUJAA, 2026) Koushik Das
This dissertation critically examines India's insider trading law, centred on the SEBI Act, 1992, and the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015. It traces how the law evolved from weak colonial-era statutes which required directors to disclose shareholdings but never actually banned insider trading to the possession-based framework introduced in 2015, where a person who holds secret price-sensitive information and trades shares is presumed to have acted wrongly. The study also covers all major amendments up to March 2025. Fair markets depend on one simple idea: that everyone trades on the same information. Insider trading destroys that idea. When someone buys or sells shares using secret company information that ordinary investors do not have, they gain an unfair advantage and the public slowly loses faith in the market. India has been trying to prevent this for over three decades, yet the problem keeps growing.
Avatars, Assets and Authority: Enforcing IP Rights in Decentralised Virtual Space
(NLUJAA, 2026) Mandvi Tripathi
This dissertation takes the premise that current IP law is not a complete solution, nor is it entirely ineffective, in addressing the issues raised by decentralised virtual worlds. In principle, the interests of creators and rights-holders can be protected in these contexts under the principle of copyright, trade mark and design rights. What is not possible now is the enforcement infrastructure, the mechanisms, institutions and governance that will help to vindicate those rights when they are violated. The law can talk of rights; it can’t talk of enforcement in a decentralised virtual world. The concepts and the evolution of the web are discussed extensively in chapter . The focus of this dissertation is that gap: between the existence of rights and the capacity to enforce them, which this dissertation aims to analyse, explain and address, through concrete proposals for adapting the doctrine and reforming the structures.
Corporate Criminal Liability in AI Based Companies
(NLUJAA, 2026) Krishna Das
The research background reveals a significant gap in the existing legal framework governing corporate criminal liability in India. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used by companies to make important business decisions with little or no human involvement. Although AI improves efficiency and productivity, it also creates serious legal challenges when its decisions result in fraud, financial loss, discrimination, privacy violations, or other forms of harm.18 When an AI system used by a company causes such harm, the law does not clearly identify who should be held criminally responsible. This uncertainty creates a major challenge for the existing framework of corporate criminal liability.19 Therefore, the present research examines this gap and evaluates whether the existing legal principles are adequate to deal with corporate crimes involving AI.
Protection of Handloom Products of the Rabha Community Under the Intellectual Property Rights Regime
(NLUJAA, 2026) Malabika Das
The traditional handloom products of the Rabha community represent an important part of their cultural identity and traditional knowledge system. These products are characterized by distinctive weaving practices, traditional designs, and cultural significance which have been preserved within the community for generations. However, in recent years, the influence of modernization, industrialization, changing lifestyle patterns, and increasing use of machine made products has posed serious challenges to the continuation of traditional weaving practices among the Rabha community. As a result, many traditional garments and weaving techniques are gradually declining and face the risk of disappearance if adequate preservation and protection measures are not adopted.
Fundamental Rights in the Digital Age: Constitutional Protection of Privacy, Freedom of Speech and Data in India
(NLUJAA, 2026) Marufa Aktar
The conceptualization of privacy in legal and philosophical discourse is often described as an effort to capture a “precious and valuable aspect of one’s personality” that remains famously difficult to define precisely. Etymologically, the term “privacy” is derived from the Latin root privatus, meaning “separated from others” or “deprived of participation in governance”. Historically, this “deprivation” referred to the exclusion from the public sphere of the polis, or political activity, in favour of the oikos, the private sphere of domestic life. In the contemporary constitutional framework of India, the primary objective of Article 21 is to ensure that every individual lives a life characterized by “peace, dignity, and freedom,” with privacy serving as the essential conduit for these values. The right to privacy stands as a fundamental human right, which has undergone substantial evolution in light of shifting societal norms and technological progress. This paper seeks to explore the concept and legal expression of privacy, chart its historical progress via pivotal court decisions, and examining the pressing challenges that confronts in digital era.
Rainbow Rights and the Law in India: A Study
(NLUJAA, 2026) Namrata Gogoi
Access to Diagnosis and the Right to Healthcare: A Rights-Based Approach to Understanding Section 3(I) of the Patents Act, 1970
(NLUJAA, 2026) Anjali Brahma
Patent law is based on the idea that knowledge can be transformed into property. Patent law seeks to promote innovation and technological advancements by granting exclusive rights over an invention.1 It rests on the idea that granting patent rights will increase private gains to the innovators for their intellectual labour, stimulating innovation.2 It imposes costs on society, as well as benefits.3 This model is effective in industrial contexts, where inventions are often capable of replication and commercial exchange to protect the rights of the interest holder. However, when it is applied in the context of medicine, this framework encounters a fundamental difficulty, as medicine is not merely technical but is closely tied to human dignity, ethical responsibility and public welfare. Medical knowledge goes beyond mere commodification, and involves the discovery of natural relationships, biological processes, and diagnostic correlations.4 As a result, not all forms of medical knowledge can be easily treated as private property.
Evaluating CSR Implementation Models in the oil and Gas Sector: A Comparative Study of Public and Private Corporations in the North-East
(NLUJAA, 2026) Angkita Das
CSR (CSR) has become one of the core concepts in the context of contemporary corporate governance, as there is an increasing demand that corporations ought to incorporate social, environmental and ethical concerns in their businesses. Historically, corporate law was dominated by a great degree of importance on the principles of shareholder primacy which focused on the understanding that the main responsibility of the corporate managers was toward their shareholders, and that they needed to maximise the wealth of the shareholders. This view was most popularly expressed by Milton Friedman who believed that the social responsibility of business was to make more profits within the law of the land.1 Nonetheless, the growth of corporate operations and their devastating effects on societies and nature has brought more and more criticism toward this tunnel vision.At its essentialism, CSR tries to harmonize the growth in economy and the standards of sustainable growth and social responsibility. Instead of profitability being taken as the only goal of the corporate activity, CSR encourages corporate decision making processes to be integrated with environmental protection, ethical business behavior and welfare of the community. The change is the more notable in the industries that can be defined by the intensive extraction of resources, i.e., the oil and gas industry, in particular. The activities of corporate social responsibility2 within these industries tend to cross over with issues affecting the environmental condition, the rights of the indigenous people and developmental issues affecting the region hence increasing the argument of responsible corporate behavior. As a result, CSR has also become realised as one of the means by which corporations are able to deal with the broader implications of their action in society.
Computational Gatekeepers and Covert Targeting: Rethinking Safe Harbour, Data Protection and Competition Regulation in Indian E-Commerce
(NLUJAA, 2026) Aditya Das
This research examines as to how these algorithmic decision-making systems function in e-commerce platforms and how these platforms had coded algorithms that have evolved beyond mere passive intermediaries to become active curators and market manipulators, challenging the foundational assumptions of safe harbour immunity. This research also studies the gaps in the Indian legislative and regulatory frameworks and shall identify the gaps from which such algorithmic processes escape meaningful evaluation despite their significant impact on market competition and consumer welfare. This research also proposes that a liability model should be put forth to monitor and distinguish between passive content hosting with that to active algorithmic curation and that the upcoming legislative amendments or regulations should incorporate algorithmic transparency mandates which will require the e-commerce operators to disclose ranking criteria, bias mitigation measures and automated or sponsored decision making criteria for systems that materially affect the market access or consumer choice by boosting ads that surely alter the final decision making process of the consumer. In recent years, the Competition Commission of India has flagged the algorithmic misuse, and to prevent that, governance in terms of algorithmic fairness is needed. This research draws attention to the much needed transparency of e-commerce platforms and suggests the incorporation of regulatory bodies that will serve as an effective regulatory tool to prevent anti-competitive practices.
Residence-Based Reservation by States in Higher Education: A Constitutional Analysis
(NLUJAA, 2026) Afhrid Sackib
The Indian Constitution, adopted on 26 November 1949 and brought into force on 26 January 1950, is a transformative document marked by remarkable ambition. At the same time, it sought to remedy the harms of colonial exploitation, dismantle centuries old practice of caste system, create a unified national identity out of diverse cultural and linguistic communities, and secure meaningful set of fundamental rights for every citizen. Among those rights, the right to equality enshrined in Articles 14, 15, and 16 occupies a position of foundational importance. It is within this constitutional framework that residence-based reservation in higher education must be understood, examined and, where necessary, critically assessed. Higher education in India has long been regarded as a key means of social mobility, economic progress, and professional success. Admission to prestigious institutions such as medical colleges, engineering institutes, law schools, and central universities can transform not only the life of the student, but also that of the student’s family, community, and region from which the student belongs. It is because these stakes are so significant that questions regarding who is admitted, on what basis, and with what preferences have has given rise to some of the most politically sensitive and judicially contested debates in independent India.
The Legal Status of “Producer” Under the GI Regime in India: A Jurisprudential Analysis
(NLUJAA, 2026) Aniket Jana
Geographical Indication (GI), it might seem a fairly easy prima facie, but the question is deceptive in its simplicity. When any consumer goes to buy a can of Darjeeling tea, a pure Kanchepuram silk saree, or a Scotch Whiskey, he or she is implicitly trusting the name on the label and has reason to believe that the product is a genuine one of a specific region or place and is produced by a group of people or community that carries the knowledge, skill and tradition that the product is known for. This belief or trust is the economic and moral foundation of the law of GI. The Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999 of India1 (hereinafter will referred as GI Act) was adopted and enacted on the backdrop of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), 19942. This agreement has a avowed policy that commits to empowerment in the rural area, while preserving the cultural integrity and the upliftment of economic status of the artisan communities. The Act creates a Sui generis regime that distinguishes between the “registered proprietor”3 and a “authorised user”4. This is the distinction that, prima facie, appears to be a functional administrative device, but upon the jurisprudentiaal scrutiny, this reveals a deep structural gap between formal ownership and substantive entitlement.

Browse

Browsing LL.M Dissertation 2025-26 by Issue Date

Results Per Page

Sort Options