I did a test run on my local (replacing jQuery completely with the newer version) in a separate branch and it seemed ok, but:
1) I'll probably have to test it more thoroughly on all pages to make sure.
2) they brought out a new listener [event "on"](http://api.jquery.com/on/) around version 1.7 to replace the "delegate" event. delegate previously allowed attaching only to the complete "document" container. The newer "on event" allows attaching to any element in the DOM, so i guess it's considered far more efficient. Moreover they deprecated delegate as of 1.9. I noticed we use "live" event in some places (which i believe internally uses delegate). This needs to be corrected in some places as I noticed we use live in some places of the code.
3) jquery-ujs also needs to be checked for compatibility (as they internally use live in some places as well).

If push comes to shove, we could always just use [jQuery.noConflict()](http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.noConflict/) and have multiple versions of jQuery coexist, but the better solution i guess would be to upgrade jQuery altogether.

Should i go ahead and give the complete upgrade_jQuery route a shot?