Articles
Right to reputation & Right to eat – Article 21 stretched further
Tennyson wrote –“A land of settled government,A land of just & old renownWhere freedom slowly broadens downFrom precedent to precedent”Article 21 of the Constitution states – No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to “procedure established by law”. The most vocal debates during Constituent Assembly sessions on its predecessor draft Article 15 surrounded use of an alternate expression - ‘due process’. Constitutional advisor Benegal Narsing Rau went to US...
Need for Sanction before passing an order for investigation u/s 156(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973
Chapter XII of the Code of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (for short, the Code) deals with information to the police and their powers to investigate. The Chapter deals, so to say, with A to Z of first information given to the police (in cognizable or non-cognizable cases), and police investigation leading to final report under Section 173 of the Code. Section 156 specifically deals with police officer’s power to investigate cognizable cases. A Station House Officer can investigate any...
Is NEET an issue between Center vs. State or an Issue concerning Lakhs of Students?
The fundamental rights and duties including those under Articles 14, 20, 21, 25 and 15, 16, 19, 30 of the Constitution are applicable to all citizens of India.Our Constitution, under cultural and educational rights states that any section of citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same. No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State...
Homelessness and Crime
How do youth homelessness relates to crime? Homeless young people and delinquency is believed to have a relationship. The homeless youths can be categorized in the following three ways those who leave home temporarily and then return;those who have left home and require some temporary assistance to make the transition to independence;and those who become homeless in their mid to late teens and who find it very difficult to break the cycle of homelessness. These are the poor materially and...
NEET Returns in not so Neat a Manner
A constitutional bench of the apex court has not only upheld the 2007 Madhya Pradesh law providing for the State’s common entrance test but has also set up an oversight committee to supervise the functioning of the Medical Council of India (MCI), which the court observed, has ‘demonstrated neither professional excellence nor ethos’. Another five-judge bench of the Supreme Court, led by Justice Anil Dave, has not only now recalled the controversial 2013 three-judge bench decision delivered by the...
Reflections on CJI’S speech: Going beyond judicial appointments for clearance of cases
Years ago, Justice Krishna Iyer was received by almost all the judges of the Allahabad High Court. Looking at the huge crowd of around 100 judges, Justice Iyer wondered “this is not court; this is population”. But the Allahabad High Court had the highest average pendency of case in India of 1337 days, according to a study by DAKSH, a Bengaluru based organisation. The fact is that even when the biggest High Court in India had 90 judges, in January 2014, it was running short of 70.The Chief...
The Careless 'Unneat' Supreme Court Order on NEET; Why is the Supreme Court of India not rendering natural justice?
“Nothing will happen in the meantime. Matter had been heard by the bench and it is over for now, please allow the examination to be conducted"- this is the response of the bench comprising of Justices A. K. Sikri and R. Banumathi of Supreme Court of India, when a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice T. S. Thakur conducted a special hearing on Saturday to deal with pollution in Delhi and did not allow the plea seeking urgent hearing for modification of the April 28 order passed by another...
Juvenile and Female Offenders
The implication of condition subjected to individuals who have been accused of necessitating immense crimes has emerged as a great concern to the government as well as community at large. At this juncture, the victims are observed to suffer from physical, emotional, mental and psychological as far as their safety and protection is concerned. Indeed, some of the damages which they obtain while in the hands of the government are hardly to recover. For instance, there is confidential information...
RTI threatened
There is a very disturbing news report about the entire political spectrum agreeing that RTI is misused and some constrictions and impediments should be developed to muzzle it. This is indeed a sad state of affairs. Samajawadi Party MP Naresh Agarwal has leveled a charge that the Indian Parliament made the RTI Act under US pressure! I would have imagined that other MPs would have raised a breach of privilege motion against him. Unfortunately, such a derogatory remark about Indian Parliament did...
Article 224A: The Need of the Hour!
The role of the judiciary has always been of great significance in the functioning of the Indian democracy and it plays a pivotal role as one of the organs of the state in upholding the values and objectives of the Constitution. But the constant tussle between the Judiciary and the Government on the controversial issue of appointment of judgesdoes little to inspire confidence amongst people that both these organs can collectively put their differences aside and work together to make the judicial...
Why an Independent Judicial Appointments System ?
The Original sin of the Supreme Court of PakistanIn 1958, Ayub Khan of Pakistan, a Sandhurst trained General, staged a coup, deposed a duly elected Government, abrogated the two year old Constitution and imposed martial law. In a radio broadcast, he informed the bewildered nation, ‘we must understand that democracy cannot work in a hot climate. To have democracy we must have a cold climate like Britain.’ A young and ambitious politician, educated in England and a barrister at law went about...
Judicial Intervention Must to Rein in 'Fire Terror'
The Kollam tragedy has assumed apocalyptic proportions and the death toll is on the rise. Reports say 451 people died in fireworks-related accidents in the last three years in Kerala. But the Kollam tragedy is of a different kind. It was the colossal price people had to pay for the scant regard that all concerned had for law.The incident poses significant questions related to the lawlessness at the micro level, which is the direct result of administrative failure at the macro level. A police...