Kapil Sibal

His family migrated to India during the partition in 1947.

Kapil Sibal (born 8 August 1948) is an Indian lawyer and politician.

A designated Senior Advocate, he has represented several high-profile cases in the Supreme Court of India and is widely regarded as one of the famous lawyers of India.

He is a Member of Parliament, in Rajya Sabha.

A University of Delhi and Harvard University graduate, Sibal has practiced law in Wall Street and held several important posts relating to law and administration including Additional Solicitor General, and President of Supreme Court Bar Association.

Sibal was born on 8 August 1948 in Jalandhar in Punjab.

Kapil Sibal moved to Delhi in 1964.

After his schooling from St John's High School, he joined St. Stephen's College, Delhi for his B.A. He earned his LL.B. degree from the prestigious Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, and later an M.A. in history from St. Stephen's College, Delhi.

He joined the bar association in 1972.

Kapil Sibal joined the Bar association in 1972.

He decided to set up his own law practice.

In the year 1973, he qualified for Indian Administrative Services and was offered an appointment.

But he declined the offer and decided to set up his own law practice.

Afterwards, he attended the Harvard Law School where he enrolled for an LL.M. which he completed in 1977.

He was designated as senior lawyer in 1983.

He was designated as a Senior Lawyer in 1983.

In 1989, he was appointed the Additional Solicitor General of India.

He was the Additional Solicitor General of India between 1989 and 1990, as well.

Over the years, he has held several important positions in the Government of India and the Society, such as: Additional Solicitor General of India (December 1989 – 1990); Member, Board of Management, Indira Gandhi National Open University (1993); President, Supreme Court Bar Association (1995–96, 1997–98 and 2001–2002); Member, Rajya Sabha (July 1998); Member, Executive Council, Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies (July, 2001); Member, Business Advisory Committee (August, 2001); Member, Committee on Home Affairs (January, 2002); Co-chairman, Indo-US Parliamentary Forum (2002); Member, Board of International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (2002); Member, Programme Board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Indian AIDS initiative (2003); Member, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention set up by the Human Rights Commission, Geneva.

The impeachment motion was placed in the assembly for debate and voting on 10 May 1993.

Of 401 members present in the assembly that day, there were 196 votes for impeachment and no votes against and 205 abstentions by ruling Congress and its allies.

In 1994, he appeared in the Parliament as a lawyer and successfully defended V. Ramaswami during impeachment proceedings.

He had served as the President of the Supreme Court Bar association on three occasions, i.e. 1995–1996, 1997–1998 and 2001–2002.

Sibal first entered Rajya Sabha in 1998 to represent Bihar.

Before that, he had unsuccessfully contested for the Lok Sabha against Sushma Swaraj.

He later contested from Chandni Chowk and won in 2004 and 2009.

As a senior Indian National Congress member then, Sibal served under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a minister holding various portfolios over the years.

As minister, he headed delegations of India in high-profile international forums.

His actions in official capacity were controversial multiple times including when he undertook to regulate internet content.

Sibal often was portrayed as an intellectual face of the Congress who batted for the party on television and in regular columns.

In the Supreme Court of India, he usually represented the Congress.

He left the Indian National Congress in 2022 to file his nomination for the Rajya Sabha independently but backed by Samajwadi Party.

In the 2004 general elections, Sibal became an MP by winning the Chandni Chowk constituency against TV actor Smriti Irani of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the National Capital Territory representing the Congress Party and was inducted into the Cabinet under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as Union Minister for Science, Technology and Earth Sciences.

He represented India in the Annual Meetings of the World Economic Forum in 2005 and 2009 held at Davos, Switzerland.

He led the Indian delegation to the Annapolis Conference, USA, held to gather International support for establishment of a Palestinian state and the realization of Israeli–Palestinian peace during November 2007.

He won the constituency of Chandni Chowk for the second time for the Indian National Congress in the Lok Sabha elections of 2009.

During his tenure as Telecom Minister his comment about the loss in the 2G spectrum case being only notional and causing "zero loss" created a public outcry and he had to clarify it later.

Kapil Sibal was indicted by CAG for favoring M/S Phoenix Rose LLC by overlooking rules and regulations and handpicking that company for creating a database for over 500,000 working professionals of People of Indian Origin settled in the US.

CAG's report said that the project's cost was $120,000 but three years after the initiation, the company has dumped the networking site, completing just over 16% of the targeted work.

Also during his time in that office, his move to regulate internet content was criticized across many social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.