OH MYLORD! I don’t have a Brow to Beat

In the Tamil movie “Ellam Avan Seyal”, playing the character of a dump lawyer named “Vandumurugan”, actor Vadivelu has well demonstrated the court room sycophancy of a lawyer towards a Judge: In the movie the lawyer pleads to the Judge ‘Thangalukkutheriyadha sattamontrumillai athilethu sirantha sattamoathai thertheduthu intha kuttravalikku thandanai kodukkaventrumentu thazhmaiyudan ketukolkiren your honour’ (“There is no law in the world which your honour is not aware of—hence please select the...

Udta Punjab: Of Courts, Cuts, Copyrights and Conflicted Counsels

Udta Punjab continues to soar at the box office. Thanks in no small part to the free publicity engineered by Pahlaj Nihalani and his “cutting” edge crew at the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).Close on the heels of our propensity to “ban” (books, beef and all else that allegedly offend our rather sensitive selves), the urge to “cut” has assumed rather ravenous proportions in India. The respectable Rajan was heckled for refusing to cut interest rates (despite such refusal being the most...

Proposed Changes to the Companies Act

The Companies Act, 2013 (“Companies Act”), while beneficial, has also been perceived as overzealous over regulation in part. With a view to facilitating the ease of doing business in India, addressing stringent compliance requirements, harmonising company law with other regulations, the Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2016 (“Bill”)was introduced in the Lok Sabha in March 2016 and is currently under review by the Parliamentary Committee on Finance. We present below, a brief summary of a few pertinent...

BCI’s duty to Protect standards of Legal Profession & Education through RTI

Parliament reposed huge confidence in Bar Council of India (BCI) making it a statutory body of Advocates entrusting with responsibility of protecting the values and ethical standards of the legal profession and education. This professional members led the struggle for independence of India, with Gandhi, Nehru and several other prominent leaders being lawyers of eminence. Gandhi’s book on Lawyers has to occupy the hands of every lawyer before they pick up CPC. Quest for justice has to be imbibed...

Judging Judges by the Length of their Judgments is a Bad Idea

A reckless story in the Times of India  recently drew outrage from the legal fraternity, including a number of reputed senior lawyers. The publication was of a suspicious letter by a fictitious litigant to the Chief Justice of India (CJI), casting serious aspersions on Justice Gita Mittal, a well-regarded judge of the Delhi high court. In pertinent part, the letter appeared to allege that her judgments were way too short; apparently she penned only “63” pages in the whole month of January.The...

Defamation law protects individuals

Defamation is an actionable offence according to the present law. The law of defamation as an offence recently survived an onslaught on it at the Supreme Court made on the ground that it violates the fundamental right of freedom of speech. The Supreme Court in a very elaborate judgment repelled the attack and protected the law. Fortunately the right of a maligned citizen to sue for damages was not challenged in India till now. Attackers only targeted the criminality of defamation created by the...

Seven Important Lessons on RTI from Delhi High Court

Delhi High Court on 24th May 2016, has criticised the Legislative Department for filing un unnecessary Writ Petition against the Order of Central Information Commission (of M Sridhar Acharyulu, CIC) directing the Government to update and upload all the latest amended bare Acts, to examine the functionality of its e-mail ID and develop an appropriate RTI filing mechanism. Justice Manmohan of Delhi High Court directed Legislative Department to recover Rs.10,000/- which was awarded as compensation...

Picture Imperfect

I suspect the presence of an extra element of cynicism in me and am always in conflict with myself to overpower the words unspoken. A friend of mine with a huge stock of ready-made sentences filled with philosophy has conveyed to me the eternal code of conduct to be followed in interpersonal relationships. ‘You are the master of words unspoken and servant of words spoken’. For my friend it was just an offloading of philosophy, which he mugged up from somewhere, but the sentence has worked well...

Privilege against ‘disclosure’ is eclipsed by RTI

The ‘privilege’ under Section 123 of the Indian Evidence Act is claimed frequently by the Government to authorize them not to produce its unpublished records in courts. As per this section a witness cannot be permitted to give any evidence which is derived from unpublished records relating to any affairs of state without permission of the officer at the head of department concerned. In a landmark decision in Punjab v SS Singh AIR 1961 SC 493, the Supreme Court considered the effect of Section...

In the name of Condominiums; Builders in Mumbai are up for big-game of increased FSI sale (MAOA-1970 misused)

A big inquiry here is that why the builders in Mumbai are recently wanting to go for ‘Apartment Owners’ Association' arrangement and are attempting to maintain a strategic distance from the age-old 'Society' structure?The reason is that the builders/developers have a lot of personal GAINS in doing so, which are as listed below: The builder/developer is interested in utilizing the extra FSI which will be recompensed by the Government for that zonein future. On the off chance that the Society is...

Tendering Pardon to an Accomplice

The complex process of tendering pardon to an approver continues to baffle the Bench and the Bar alike. It is more due to want of proper comprehension than due to lack of procedural clarity that no uniform practice seems to be in vogue with regard to the judicial act of tendering pardon to an accomplice. My humble endeavour through this article is to familiarize the legal fraternity regarding the intricacies of this seemingly simple exercise. The provisions of law pertaining to the above topic...

Water Even not a Drop to Waste!

Water, water, everywhere,And all the boards did shrink;Water, water, everywhere,Nor any drop to drinkSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, has written the above poem in 1797–98 and was published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Those words have become prediction of climate and became reality in India in 2016. The scarcity of water has reached to such stage where the Central Government has to supply potable water in railway wagons.In 1860, Lord Macaulay provided in the...