00:00The next time you want to, as law officer, refer to a sitting chief minister by her name,
00:05give her the dignity of calling her the chief minister of a state, a multi-term chief minister.
00:11This Calcutta High Court exchange brought senior advocate Meneka Guruswamy into focus,
00:17now nominated to the Rajasabha by West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee's TMC,
00:22a move that could make her India's first openly LGBTQ member of parliament.
00:27Please mute yourself, alright?
00:29This is unbecoming conduct.
00:31A senior advocate of the Supreme Court,
00:33Guruswamy joined the bar in 1997 and trained under former Attorney General Ashok Desai.
00:39She later studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and went on to complete her master's at Harvard Law School.
00:45Over the years, she's argued several landmark constitutional cases,
00:49most notably the 2018 verdict that read down Section 377,
00:53decriminalizing homosexuality in India.
00:56That legal battle was both professional and deeply personal.
01:00Guruswamy fought the case alongside fellow Supreme Court advocate Arundhati Karchu.
01:05After the verdict, the two publicly acknowledged their relationship,
01:09becoming among the most visible LGBTQ public figures in India's legal system.
01:14In 2019, they were named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people for their role in advancing LGBTQ
01:21rights.
01:22Born into a family deeply engaged with public life,
01:25Guruswamy is the daughter of political analyst and former civil servant Mohan Guruswamy and Meera Guruswamy.
01:31With the Trinambul Congress holding a comfortable majority in the West Bengal Assembly,
01:36Guruswamy is widely expected to win her Rajasubha seat when voting takes place on March 16.
01:42Law.
01:45Law.
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