It Is Too Late To Put The Genie Back In The Bottle

The Indian judiciary through various judgments held that the declaration of a central law as unconstitutional by a High Court is binding all over India and not just within the territorial jurisdiction of that High Court. Despite this, Parliament has, quite incredulously, chosen to bring back a provision which was already declared unconstitutional, not by a constitutional amendment, but by simply changing the label of the identical provision under a new statute. Is it possible for Parliament to...

Writing The Law, Yet Outside The Law: Disability Rights And India's Law Entrance Exams

India has a wide range of national, state, and college-level entrance examinations that regulate access to legal education and determine entry into undergraduate and postgraduate law programmes across the country. These entrance exams provide an intensely competitive environment for law aspirants. For candidates with disabilities, however, this competition is layered with systemic barriers that undermine equal access to a crucial gateway to legal education in India.The Indian Constitution...

HECI And The Fault Lines: A Legal Reckoning

India is at the threshold of a fundamental reconfiguration of its higher and professional education landscape. The government, by proposing a sweeping legislative framework, commonly referred to as the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, is poised to dissolve multiple statutory bodies including the University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), consolidating their regulatory powers under a single...

When Digital Evidence Fails: The Corporate Cost Of Ignoring Metadata

Creating document, clicking picture, or sending email leaves behind more than we realise. Each digital action creates a silent layer that records when it was created, who created it, where it came from, and how it is modified. This hidden trail is called metadata, often described as “data about data”.Right from communication and compliance to record keeping and decision-making, technology plays a vital role in the...

The Illusion Of Progress: Why India Is Not Ready To Be An Arbitration Hub

The desire of India to place itself near the global arbitration hubs has continued to falter under the pressure of inconsistency in policies, lack of efficiency in the administration and general unwillingness to adopt the rapid method of solving disputes. Although Indian arbitration system has been remodeled and promises and commitments are repeatedly given, the system has remained entrenched...

The Curial Act Of “Taking Cognizance Of An Offence” And Its Ramifications Under BNSS

C O N T E N T SSl.No:I N N E R T I T L E SPARANo:WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THE WORD “OFFENCE” ? Comparative table showing Section 2 (24) of BNS and Section 40 IPC11WHETHER IT IS A “COGNIZABLE OFFENCE” OR A “NON-COGNIZABLE OFFENCE”, TAKING COGNIZANCE OF THE OFFENCE BY THE COURT IS A MUST2WHAT IS MEANT BY “TAKING COGNIZANCE OF AN OFFENCE”3WHICH PROVISION OF LAW GIVES AUTHORITY TO THE MAGISTRATE TO TAKE COGNIZANCE OF AN OFFENCE Comparative table of S.210 BNSS and S.190 Cr.P.C.44 ...

Institutional Coalitions and Constitutional Consequences

A Theory of 'Eidocracy'For centuries, political philosophy has grappled with the fragility of freedom—how power, even when born of the people, tends to turn inward and preserve itself. Much has been written about the tyranny of rulers, the indifference of citizens, and the illusions that sustain authority. Yet what has remained less examined is the silent transformation that takes place within lawful systems themselves: when obedience endures without conviction, and legitimacy survives without...

Trampling Sovereignty: Donroe Doctrine And The Paradoxes Of International Law

The Action In VenezuelaThe recent military actions conducted by the United States to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on charges of narco-terrorism, apart from exhibiting the shifting dynamics between economic and territorial imperialism, broach certain crucial questions for international law. It is far from obfuscating that harping on any rule-based international order, democratisation, and human rights is one thing, and actually practising them is quite another. Yet, the...

Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Jurisprudence Of Social Death And Irreparable Consequences Of Malicious POCSO Prosecutions

The Golden Thread of Indian criminal jurisprudence the presumption of innocence is more than a legal technicality it is a constitutional promise enshrined under Article 21. However, in the hyper-sensitive corridors of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, this thread is increasingly being severed. While the Act was born of a noble, urgent necessity to shield our children from trauma, its procedural framework has inadvertently created a statutory trap. For the wrongly...

Dissent Behind Bars: Unpacking The Delhi Riots Bail Judgment

Pre-trial liberty is not a technical privilege, but rather a moral presumption that, in a democracy, punishment follows proof, not mere accusation. The recent judgment in the Delhi Riots Conspiracy case under the UAPA sits uneasily with this presumption previously echoed in the Supreme Court's bail jurisprudence, even in the context of the UAPA.Bail, democracy, and statutory rigoursThe UAPA bail regime already inverts the ordinary grammar of liberty by treating jail as the norm and bail as the...

Audi Alteram Partem at the Stage of Cognizance under the BNSS, 2023

A Right without Effective RemedyThe principle of audi alteram partem that no person should be condemned unheard is often invoked as a touchstone of procedural fairness. Under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), courts have increasingly begun recording that the accused was “heard” before cognizance was taken. At first glance, this appears to mark a rights oriented shift in criminal procedure.Yet, a closer examination reveals a troubling paradox. The hearing now being afforded at...

The Synthetic Victim: Why India's POCSO Law Must Interpret 'Child' as Appearance, Not Ontology

The Statutory Framework and the Problem of Synthetic MinorsIn 2012, the parliament came up with gender-neutral legislation under the title 'The Protection of Children from sexual offences act' to take care of children against sexual offences. The act refers to the child as any individual under the age of eighteen years. Later in the year 2019, the law sought to revise it and introduced a new provision, and a new section 2(1)(da), which deals with child pornography, was added. This amendment...