Sanjay Upadhyay, Advocate, Supreme Court of India, is the Founder and Managing Partner of the India’s first environmental law firm, Enviro Legal Defence Firm. Sanjay has been practicing environment and development law since 1993. An India Visiting Fellow at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley (Fall 1996) and a legal intern to the Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund, San Francisco, a Global Fellow in Marine Policy at the Duke University, North Carolina, he started his professional career at the World Wide Fund for Nature–India at the Centre for
Environmental Law. Sanjay has served as an environmental and development law expert to most well known international, multilateral, national and state institutions including the World Bank, ADB, IUCN, DFID, AFD, FAO, UNDP, IIED, and ODI to name a few. He has been in the drafting committees of several laws in India and abroad including Wildlife Act, Forest Rights Act, Nagaland Biodiversity Rules, Land Acquisition Law of Afghanistan, Forest Sector Policy of Himachal Pradesh, Medicinal Plant Policies of Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and most recently
the Indian Forest Act among others. Sanjay practices in the Supreme Court of India and particularly in the National Green Tribunal. Sanjay is also interested in music especially sufi, ghazals, and therapeutic music.