Dr. Biswarup Bhattahcharya was a psychiatrist at the Waterford Hospital and president of the Newfoundland-Labrador Human Rights Association. At some point between December 1968 and July 1969, W.J. Noseworthy stepped down as president of the Newfoundland Human Rights Committee and Bhattacharya took control of the organization which was now called the Newfoundland-Labrador Human Rights Association (NLHRA). With little financial support from the provincial government, the original members (Bhattacharya, Lilianne Bouzane, James Morgan and Rae Perlin) were forced to meet in private homes, and there is no evidence of additional members beyond this small group of individuals. But much as Robson in Vancouver, Borovoy in Toronto and Champagne in Montreal helped keep their respective associations alive, so Bhattacharya proved to be the leading force within the NLHRA. He was central in keeping the group alive in its first decade of activity and would later play an important role in the formation of the Canadian Federation of Civil Liberties and Human Rights Associations.

A great deal of the NLHRA's work involved individual complaints rather than legislative reform. The efforts of individuals like Bhattacharya were critical in these situations. For instance, on 26 October 1973, the Medical Records Librarian at the Waterford Hospital in St. John’s received a subpoena to appear in Supreme Court three days later to discuss the medical records of a specific patient. This was not a criminal matter but a divorce case, and neither the patient nor the psychiatrist were informed of the subpoena. Unsure about whether or not to accede to the request and divulge private patient information, the librarian contacted Bhattacharya, who immediately took possession of the documents and refused to hand them over to the court, arguing that the records were the property of the hospital and it was an unnecessary violation of a patient’s privacy. When the Justice Department realized it would have to take the president of the NLHRA to court, the matter was quietly dropped and the subpoena retracted. It was just one example of the type of service the NLHRA could provide on an individual basis for people unsure about their rights, or the rights of others