Biography of Chandra Bhatnagar

Chandra Bhatnagar is a Staff Attorney with the Human Rights Program (HRP), where he leads HRP's domestic and international advocacy around Hurricane Katrina, affirmative action, and juvenile justice issues, and is engaged in federal court litigation and litigation in international tribunals involving the rights of low-wage immigrant workers, undocumented workers, and guest-workers. Bhatnagar is counsel in David, et al. v. Signal International, LLC, et al., a case on behalf of over 500 Indian men trafficked into the U.S. and lured by false promises of permanent U.S. residency only to find themselves forced into involuntary servitude and living in overcrowded, guarded labor camps; Lama v. Rana, a successful quantum meruit lawsuit brought on behalf of a Nepali domestic worker against her abusive employer; and "Petition Alleging Violations of the Human Rights of Undocumented Workers by the United States of America," a case still pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Prior to joining the ACLU, Bhatnagar was a Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, where he directed the South Asian Workers' Project for Human Rights, a community-based project providing legal services to low-wage workers from South Asia.

Previously, he was the Assistant Director of Columbia University's "Bringing Human Rights Home Project," where he worked to improve conditions affecting post 9-11 detainees and efforts to organize a coalition of human rights defenders in the United States.

Bhatnagar has also worked internationally, partnering with a leading NGO in India in applying human rights standards to their anti-child labor/bonded labor campaigns, and domestically with the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he did immigrants' rights and anti-police brutality organizing, and served as the interim director of the Ella Baker Summer Intern Program. He received a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an LL.M. in international human rights from Columbia Law School.