The third volley of NRI Law Collection penned by legal luminaries Anil and Ranjit Malhotra carries a Foreword by Mr. Soli Sorabjee. Starting with a touching salute to the late patriarch Respected Ram Niwas Mirdha, the legal baggage in the book titled \'Indians, NRIs & the Law\' has 35 short crisp pieces and 9 detailed expositions. Admirably crafted, the 450 page compilation is a store house of NRI Law profusely complimented with Jacket Comments internationally. It is a culmination of the authors\' professional experiences of handling NRI disputes in courts worldwide and their deliberations in Conferences scattered over London, Munich, Netherlands, Vancouver, Cape Town, Perth, Rio de Janeiro and Hyderabad.
The topic headings reveal it all. Some are, \"Can a Broken Marriage Be Stitched Together?\", \"No Bull in a China Shop of NRI Divorces & Anti-suit injunctions\", \"Dispute Resolution in The Family the Law forgot,\" \"Pre-Nuptial Agreements: Unsuited in the Indian context,\" \"NRI Commissions-An adventurous agenda,\" \"Voting Rights for NRIs-An Optical Illusion,\" \"Human Smuggling- The Dark Side Of The Moon,\" \"Illegal Immigration- Merchants Of Death,\" \"Going Abroad-In Jail,\" \"Hindu Marriages- Made In Heaven, Celebrated In India, & Dissolved In USA,\" \"Corbett\'s Legacy,\" \"All Aboard For The Fertility Express,\" \"Socio-Legal Perspectives Of Forced Marriages-Perceptions & Solutions,\" \"To Return or Not To Return Abducted Children,\" \"Key Inbound Business Immigration and Employment Issues,\" \"Conflicts of Adoption Laws,\" \"Law of Arrest in India\" and \"International Arbitration Issues\". The list goes on and on endlessly. The intrigue drives you to delve deeper in this NRI jurisprudence.
Quoting the Supreme Court in Baby Manji Yamada (AIR 2009 SC 84), \"Commercial surrogacy\" reaching \"industry proportions is sometimes referred to by the emotionally charged and potentially offensive terms: Wombs for rent, Outsourced pregnancy or baby farms,\" the authors state that surrogacy is said to legal because it is not illegal. The authors think that forced and early marriages entrap women and young girls in relationships that deprive them of their basic human rights and that the Government has to take stringent action against the extra judicial bodies which have so far been shielded from any State intrusion due to political reasons. Human smuggling has been described by the authors as \"A trade in which Indian youth have been bought and sold as literal slaves like any other commercial merchandise recently in Iraq.\" In the view of the authors \"Modern concepts and issues including commercial surrogacy, inter-country adoptions, inter-parental child removal, inter-continental matrimonial litigation and instances of global child abuse present new challenges. The law never anticipated or visualized these new generation legal complexities, and hence statutory law in India contains no provisions to define or rectify them.\" The text explores many more unchartered waters.
The Foreword of Mr. Soli Sorabjee reads \"The book will be extremely useful to academicians, Judges, policy makers, overseas and Indian lawyers as also to foreign readers by providing answers to unresolved problems in new emerging areas of the vast Indian Diaspora scattered around the world.\" No doubt, the text does justice to 30 million NRIs scattered in 180 nations abroad. The celebrated work is a milestone in NRI history and a reading is recommended.
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Brief professional profile of Anil Malhotra
*Anil Malhotra is a practicing Advocate in India since September 1983 at the Punjab and Haryana High Court at Chandigarh. He appears as Counsel in the Supreme Court of India at New Delhi and before other Courts, Commissions, Boards and Tribunals. He holds Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Laws (Professional) degrees from the Punjab University, Chandigarh, India. He attained an LLM degree from SOAS, University of London, London in November 1985. He studied comparative family law at the London School of Economics. He has taught civil procedural laws and matrimonial remedies for six years as a part-time lecturer at the Faculty of Laws, Punjab University, and Chandigarh, India. For over 25 years he has had extensive exposure in handling civil, matrimonial, criminal and overseas litigation on behalf of non-resident Indians residing abroad. He represents a large number of overseas clients in Indian courts and regularly opines on matters of Indian law in cases arising in related matters in foreign jurisdictions. He has conducted a vast variety of matters in Indian Courts pertaining to interpretation and application of foreign Court Orders regarding divorce decrees, child abduction, custody, maintenance, adoption and property related issues of non resident Indians. He interacts extensively with a worldwide Indian population settled overseas in advising them regularly on all issues of civil, matrimonial and criminal law. He is a member of Lawasia, International Law Association, International Bar Association, Commonwealth Lawyers Association and Indian Society of International Law besides being Country Representative (Family Law) Lawasia. His law firm, Malhotra & Malhotra Associates is empanelled Lawyers for several key embassies and High Commissions at New Delhi for advisory, opinion and other legal work.
Have contributed significantly to issues of Inter-Country Adoptions, Inter-Parental Child Removal and Surrogacy by convening seminars, discussions and debates at the India International Centre, New Delhi and other law faculties in association with Law Commission of India and Mr. Soli Sorabjee, Senior Advocate. Have to his credit Amicus and Joint Expert appointments by Courts in India and abroad.
Have co-authored book titled “Acting for Non-resident Indian Clients” (London 2005) published by Jordan Publishing Limited, Bristol, UK. Have authored booklet on “An Overview of Legal Issues” for the Punjab Government (2008).
Have authored book titled “India, NRIs and the Law” published by Universal Law Publishing Company Private Limited, New Delhi in 2009.
Have written regular newspaper articles on family law and allied issues with about 100 articles to his credit.
On January 29, 2007 was elected as Fellow of the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, London.
In May 2010, the Executive Council of the International Law Association, London has nominated him as a Member of the International Family Law Committee of the International Law Association.
He is the Indian family law Correspondent for the International Family Law journal published by Jordan Publishing Limited, Bristol. As an author he has to his credit substantial published work in international legal journals. He is the Indian representative for Reunite Child Abduction Agency.
He was invited by the International Law Association as a Speaker to the 73rd Biennial Conference to be held at Rio De Janerio, Brazil to speak in the session on Rights of Children on August 18, 2008, where he made a presentation titled “India, Inter Country Parental Child Removal and the Law.”
Was also invited to speak on “Surrogacy Issues and Inter-Parental Child Abduction in India” at the Lawasia “Children and Law Conference” in Singapore on May 21-23, 2009. He was the only legal practitioner amongst Judges who had been invited to speak at the International Family Justice Judicial Conference for the Common Law & Commonwealth Jurisdictions held at Windsor, UK from August 4-7, 2009.
Was invited as a Panelist in the 74th Biennial Conference of the International Law Association to be held in the Hague, Netherlands from August 15 to 19, 2010 to speak in the session on “Out of Concern for the Child : Transnational Co-operation in Cases of Child Protection, Maintenance and Abduction.
Invited to present a paper on Surrogacy Titled “ALL ABOARD FOR THE FERTILITY EXPRESS” at THE 14TH ANNUAL FAMILY LAW CONFERENCE 2011, CapeTown, South Africa, organised BY MILLER DU TOIT CLOETE INC AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE ON 17 AND 18 MARCH 2011.
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Anil Malhotra,
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