The SK Malik Chair on Access to Justice was instituted through an endowment by the Vishwa Nath and Santosh Bakshi Charitable Educational Trust. The family of Late Mr. SK Malik, a legal practitioner, has instituted a chair in his name, to carry forward his legacy of providing pro bono legal aid to marginalised communities.

In March 2022, Professor Anup Surendranath was appointed as the first the SK Malik Chair Professor on Access to Justice. Professor Surendranath has made significant contributions on issues of legal aid in criminal justice under the aegis of the Chair and as Executive Director of Project 39A. Professor Surendranath supervised significant research on the data emerging from the Fair Trial Programme on undertrial representation in Pune and Nagpur Central Prisons. Detailed data analysis of legal aid beneficiaries, utilisation of legal aid, demographic profile of legal aid beneficiaries, nature of offences in which legal aid was sought etc was part of the research supervised by Professor Surendranath. The detailed data maintained by the Fair Trial Programme allowed for such data analysis and the contributions to this analysis was published in the report ‘Prisons, Courts, and Legal Aid‘.

Further, Professor Surendranath along with Gale Andrew undertook a detailed empirical analysis of bail orders in nearly 40,000 cases in theft and rape cases in Delhi. This was to understand the dynamics of bail adjudication in Delhi’s courts and map the consistencies/ inconsistencies between the doctrinal requirements of bail adjudication and the actual reasons given in bail decisions. This paper titled ‘ Confused Purposes and Inconsistent Adjudication: An Assessment of Bail Decisions in Delhi’s Courts‘ was published in the Asian Journal of Comparative Law.

In September 2024, a conference on Data for Justice will be organised under the aegis of the Chair in collaboration with the India Justice Report. Also, a consultation among law schools towards the end of 2024 is being developed on mapping and addressing challenges in undertaking clinical work within the sphere of criminal justice.