Beyond Winner And Loser: Reimagining Section 9 In Post-Award Stage

An arbitral award is understood as the culmination of the arbitral process. The pleadings have been closed, evidence has been led and arguments have been heard before rendering an award. The award, however, often marks not the end of the dispute, but the beginning of a distinct post-award phase. The unsuccessful party may challenge the award under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 ("Arbitration Act"), while the successful party may move towards enforcement. Between the...

Legal Education In India: An Expensive Dream And Growing Divide In Access To Justice

Law is one of the noble professions in India and in the entire world. Despite being a noble profession, legal education consists of various discrepancies and irregularities which need to be addressed. The Medium of Instruction, the expensive fee structure is ultimately widening the gap in legal education between tier 1 and tier 3 colleges, which is a great matter of concern as it is making legal education inaccessible for students belonging from under privileged families. Discriminatory Approach...

India's Surveillance Gap

The controversial mass surveillance by the Delhi police for criminal profiling of protestors at the recent CJP protests at Jantar Mantar in Delhi has raised serious concern surrounding limits of surveillance and consequences of unauthorized processing of personal data. In July of 2026, the Delhi Police deployed the Ikshana van - a mobile surveillance vehicle with eight fixed cameras, first inducted before the 2023 G20 Summit. Deployed without justification, the facial recognition system,...

Does One Forum Fit All?

The recent decision of the NCLAT, Principal Bench in ARC Research and Development Centre Limited v. Liquidator of Adya Oils and Chemicals Ltd. (“Adya Oils”) through a majority decision of two technical Members had expanded the contours of Section 60(5)(c) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (“Code”) to include a decision on easement rights affecting rights of a third party. Although the Supreme Court has stayed the operation of the NCLAT decision and referred the dispute to mediation,...

Constitution Of Constitution Benches

The recent judgement of the Supreme Court defining the industry in State of U.P. v. Jal Bir Singh etc., Civil Appeal No. 897 of 2022 etc., while reconsidering the little less than a century old definition given in the case of Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board v. A. Rajappa, (1978) 2 SCC 213, has raised an important question regarding the meaning and true spirit of Constitution Benches. In detailed dissenting opinion of HMJ Dipankar Datta writing for himself and HMJ Ujjal Bhuyan,...

You Shared Photo. Did You Consent To What AI Could Infer?

A recent recurring theme in social media circles where users upload their photographs and ask AI systems to recreate those pictures in the 1980's style. While such pictures are entertaining, the underlying question that is only beginning to be addressed by Indian privacy law is rather difficult to answer. When a person uploads his photograph to an AI system, what exactly is he giving consent for? Of course, the natural answer to this question would be the photograph itself. But is it enough...

Forest Rights Act Has Legal And Implementation Problem

Only one of the two has actually been solved.Nineteen years have passed since Parliament passed the Forest Rights Act, 2006. Today, almost no one says India lacks a law to protect forest dwellers. The Act exists. The Rules exist. The machinery to process claims exists too. The real question is different. Is this machinery working the way Parliament wanted it to work?The Act was passed to correct an old wrong. Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers had lived on forest land for...

Can State Take Down Your Post Without Hearing ? Comparative Public Law Case For Digital Due Process In India

On 29 March 2026, the Facebook page belonging to digital news platform Molitics was blocked all over India and unavailable for viewing. Molitics approached the Delhi High Court claiming that it had neither received a reasoned order nor been informed why its page had been blocked. This question ultimately concerned a simple point of procedure; how can a person challenge the suppression of online speech when they are not informed as to the direction given to the social media intermediary by the...

Sand Scandals: Directive On Disusage

Despite a call for sustainable practices and the efforts to establish a surveillance system, coupled with the National Green Tribunal's targeted crackdown on the illicit sand mining activities, rampant illegal sand mining continues to plague the country in response to the excessive demand of sand, to match the massive construction drive of the nation. Demands tripling by the time we form these thoughts, sand holds the infamous title, for collectively being the second-most...

Beyond Marriage: Same-Sex Gap In Supreme Court's New Section 498A Test

In August 2026, the Supreme Court handed down a judgment family-law practitioners had been waiting years for. In Dr. Lokesh B.H. & Ors. v. State of Karnataka & Anr., a Bench headed by Justice Sanjay Karol answered a deceptively simple question: can a man not legally married to a woman, but living with her as though he were, be prosecuted as her "husband" under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, now Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita? For over four decades, the plain text of...

Composite Transaction Route To “Veritable Party”: Doctrine Still Finding Its Edges

Indian arbitration law has spent the last two years refining a single question when can a non-signatory be forced into or allowed to invoke an arbitration clause it never signed? The Constitution Bench in Cox and Kings Ltd. v. SAP India Pvt. Ltd. 2023 LiveLaw (SC) 1042, gave courts two distinct routes to answer this “group of companies” doctrine, which looks at corporate structure and conduct and the “composite transaction” doctrine which looks at whether a set of linked agreements forms a...

AIBE Open Book Exam That Is Anything But Cakewalk

Ask any law graduate what the easiest-sounding exam of their career was supposed to be, and many will say the All India Bar Examination. Open book, no negative marking, unlimited attempts and on paper, it glance like a formality. Ask the same graduates after they've actually sat for it, and the answer changes entirely from the perceived notion about it. For an assessmentt designed to be a threshold rather than a hurdle, the AIBE has quietly become one of the most debated tests in Indian legal...