Day An RTI Reply Becomes Criminal Act

The Right to Information Act, 2005 rests on a simple democratic principle: a citizen has the right to know what the State is doing, how it is doing it and what records it holds. The Public Information Officer is not merely an administrative intermediary in this process. He is the statutory officer through whom that right is implemented. His obligation to respond is created by law. This becomes particularly significant when a PIO does not merely delay information or commit an inadvertent mistake,...

Why Indian Government Losing Faith In Arbitration?

On 03.06.2024, Government of India, Ministry of Finance, issued an Office Memorandum[1] which send “shock waves” to certain portion of legal community engaged in arbitration. The OM, in a nutshell, mentioned that:1. None of the advantages that arbitration was expected to provide-Speed, Convenience, Technical Expertise, and Finality, were being achieved. Arbitration had simply become an additional layer and source of more litigation. 2. Government as a disputant is subject to large number of...

“Compensation, Not Charity”: Can International Law Make Major Emitters Pay for Nepal's Climate Losses?

On 26 August 2026, a massive ice-and-rock avalanche in the high Himalaya fell into the Lhende valley, temporarily blocked the river and released a destructive surge of water, rock, ice and sediment into Nepal's Bhotekoshi–Trishuli–Narayani river system. Preliminary reports suggest that a roughly 600-metre-wide mass fell about 1,200 metres from an altitude of approximately 5,200 metres. As of 5 September, Nepal reported 1,344 bodies recovered, around 5,000 people missing and 13,098 rescued. The...

ED Compliance Checklist Under Sections 17, 20 And 8 Of PMLA

Enforcement Directorate action under Sections 17, 20 and 8 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 sits at the sharpest edge of the statute. A search or freezing order under Section 17 can immobilise bank accounts and remove property from a person's control long before the merits are examined. The Act responds to that power with a staged discipline: search or freezing, retention, and adjudicatory confirmation are three separate steps, not interchangeable routes to the same result. A...

Cost Of State Neglect: How India's Writs Are Reinventing Accountability In Public Healthcare

How about a case where one visits a government hospital and leaves in a condition that is disabling, not because of the inadequacy of the surgeon doing the operation but because of the lack of basic sterilisation equipment in the operation theatre? In whose court will that issue of responsibility arise, and what is its final forum for resolution?The time is finally ripe for this long-overdue constitutional answer to that question, which for years has been clouded by the lack of clear...

Cash Is King Again - How India's UPI Miracle Just Grew Price Tag

The world's love affair with transacting and paying without even touching legal tender money is older than most of us think. It began in 1958, when Bank of America mailed unsolicited credit cards to approximately 60,000 residents of Fresno, California, under the brand “BankAmericard”. What became known as the “Fresno Drop” was a radical experiment in the history of banking i.e. putting a ready-to-use line of credit into people's hands before they even knew of and had even asked for one.By 1976,...

Missing Piece In BNSS: Why India Urgently Needs Victim Impact Assessment Law

The enactment of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (“BNSS”) has been accompanied by a consistent legislative narrative: that Indian criminal procedure is transitioning from a model preoccupied with the rights of the accused to one that gives comparable weight to the interests of the victim. Section 360 of the BNSS, which mandates that a court hear the victim before permitting the withdrawal of a prosecution, is frequently invoked as the clearest illustration of this shift.This shift,...

When Tax Appeal Backfires: How Far Can 'No Reformatio in Peius' Travel Under GST?

An airline challenged a penalty of Rs. 12,000. Its appeal led to a remand. When the matter came back for de novo adjudication, the penalty was no longer Rs. 12,000; it was Rs. 71,29,140. That extraordinary escalation is what brought the Supreme Court, on 1 September 2026, to the doctrine of no reformatio in peius - the principle that a litigant should not be placed in a worse position merely because it used a remedy provided by law. In M/s Saudi Arabian Airlines v. Union of India, 2026 INSC 933...

Forgotten Educated Prisoner: Blind Spot In India's Prison Reform

When prison reform is discussed in India, the conversation naturally gravitates toward overcrowding, healthcare, legal aid, security, and literacy. These are urgent issues. Yet, one demographic is almost entirely missing from the debate: the educated professional. A person's qualifications do not simply evaporate the moment a prison gate locks behind them.We rarely account for the graduates, accountants, engineers, or managers navigating a system entirely unequipped for their backgrounds. We...

One Function, Two Rulebooks: Consent Manager-Account Aggregator Overlap Under DPDP Rules, 2025.

What happens when there are two guards guarding two entrances but into the same vault? The qualifications for both guards are different, one had to prove himself for years to earn the post; the other was waved in on far lighter terms. While the stricter guard is more trusted, the visitor, who sees none of this, simply picks the nearer door. This choice in itself turns out to be problematic.The final DPDP rules were released back in November, 2025. India will now run on two consent intermediaries...

Body Before Birth: Can Article 21 Shield Genome From Non-Consensual CRISPR Editing?

In November 2018, a Chinese biophysicist named He Jiankui announced to the world that he had successfully edited the germline of two human embryos twins, later named Lulu and Nana using the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool. The global scientific community responded with near-universal condemnation. He was jailed. The twins carry heritable genetic modifications that will, if they have children, pass into the next generation. The change cannot be undone.That episode felt like science fiction then. It...

Anti-Competitiveness When Airports Own Airlines

The government's move to loosen restrictions on cross-ownership between airport operators and airlines deserves deeper scrutiny as a policy choice, even when major private airport operators deny any current proposal to enter the airline industry.The Ministry of Civil Aviation is considering whether a relaxation in cross-ownership restrictions between airport operators and airlines can be allowed. Under the present concession agreements governing Delhi and Mumbai airports, an operator is not...