Jafar Alam

Jafar Alam is a Partner in the Dispute Resolution practice group at Trilegal. His areas of expertise are commercial and regulatory litigation and arbitration. He has extensive experience handling regulatory, infrastructure and commercial matters ranging from tender disputes, natural resource and environmental disputes, EPC disputes and telecom, technology and electricity disputes before various fora, including the Supreme Court of India, High Courts and various tribunals. He regularly argues regulatory disputes of multiple hues, including electricity, telecom, competition, securities and trade duty disputes; and handles arbitrations – ad hoc and institutional – and has appeared before various courts in arbitration-related proceedings, including urgent interim relief, award challenges, arbitrator challenges and enforcement proceedings.

• Advised Apraava in a high-stakes arbitration initiated by Gujarat Gas Limited (GGL), which had sought approximately USD 60 million in damages for alleged contractual breach and tortious interference with its contractual rights. The arbitration was presided over by an eminent tribunal comprising V.K. Rajah (Former Attorney General of Singapore), and former Indian Supreme Court Justices R.V. Raveendran and A.K. Sikri. Trilegal handled the matter end-to-end, including antecedent court proceedings, drafting pleadings, and delivering oral advocacy, ultimately securing a favourable award that dismissed all claims against Apraava.
• Represented Rising Sun Energy, a solar power developer, before the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (“APTEL”) in an appeal filed by the state-owned power distribution company of Chhattisgarh (“CSPDCL”), where the team secured an order requiring CSPDCL to pay an additional tariff of 0.15/kWh, corresponding to approximately USD 35 million, as an interim measure during the pendency of the appeal.
• Represented Arcelor Mittal Nippon Steel India (AMNS) in a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court of India, challenging the constitutionality and imposition of electricity duty on the generation of electricity by captive generators in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The Supreme Court is set to determine the constitutional validity of various state legislations that impose differential electricity duty on captive generation, and will address the critical question of whether electricity generation can be taxed, given that existing electricity laws only permit taxation on consumption. The decision could have a significant impact on the viability of captive generation plants. We are advising and representing AMNS before the Supreme Court, including drafting pleadings and briefing senior counsel appearing on its behalf.
• Represented Equifax Credit Information Services India Ltd. in a significant Public Interest Litigation before the Supreme Court of India (Surya Prakash v. Union of India & Ors.), involving allegations of breach of data privacy, discrimination in lending, and improper handling of credit information. Equifax, one of four RBI-licensed Credit Information Companies (CICs) in India, is among 13 respondents, including the Union of India, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Reserve Bank of India, the other three CICs, and various FinTech companies. The matter raises critical questions regarding the processing of credit information of millions of Indians and their data privacy rights, with far-reaching implications for the functioning of CICs, the country’s banking system, FDI in the sector, and broader financial inclusion and privacy issues. We are involved in all stages of litigation, including advising on strategy, drafting the counter-affidavit and written submissions, briefing senior counsel, and representing the client in hearings before the Supreme Court.

• Commercial and transactions
• Dispute resolution
• Government and regulatory

• Construction and materials
• Natural resources
• Technology and telecommunications

• BA (Hons), St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi (2005)
• LL.B., Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi (2008)
• LL.M., University of Chicago Law School (2014)

• Supreme Court Bar Association
• Supreme Cour Advocate-on-Record Association

• Bar Council of Delhi (2007)
• Advocate-on-record of the Supreme Court of India (2017)