Examining Bar Council's Role: Profession, Pedagogy And Dual Mandate

In the wake of the recent controversy created by the Bar Council of India, which imposed a blanket ban on the 2026 batch of NALSAR University, withdrew it within an hour, and later apologised to the students, there are calls for a larger enquiry. Do we need a Bar Council? The Bar Council of India, constituted under the Advocates Act of 1961, discharges dual functions: on one hand, regulation and supervision over the legal profession and, on the other, regulatory control over legal education. But...

Punitive & Stigmatic Termination Of Temporary And Probationary Employees

What most attracts our general populace to government jobs is job security, in other words, Right to Hold the Post. A permanent government employee has a right to hold the post and cannot be removed or dismissed without following the procedure prescribed in Article 311(2) of the Constitution of India, 1950. Such employees can only be removed or discharged, when the post is abolished or he or she is declared to be guilty of misconduct, negligence or inefficiency that too after carrying out...

Undermining The Law

On 17th August this year, the President gave assent to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2026,[1] and with it the Parliament completed what can fairly be called a rescue operation. It was an attempt to claw back ground the Union lost in the Supreme Court's mineral royalty verdict of July 2024. The Bill had cleared both Houses on 13th August, with remarkably little of the sustained public debate that a reordering of Centre-State fiscal power might be expected to...

Glorifying Duty Amidst Administrative Accountability: Eroded Baseline Of Indian Governance

The recent news reports across Maharashtra have been dominated by headlines of senior IAS officer Tukaram Mundhe for his aggressive stand- “Safe Food, Safe Maharashtra.” Mundhe as the Commissioner of Food Safety, surfaced to fanhood followed by surprise raids across Mumbai and neighboring districts. News headlines have showcased the zeal as "heroic" interventions by the Commissioner. While the strict enforcement of food safety standards is undeniably vital for public health, but the nation's...

Eighteen Billion Dollars And An Empty Chair: Meta's Settlement And Global South's Missing Leverage

On Wednesday, Meta agreed to pay somewhere between $16 and $18 billion, the exact figure depends on which filing you read and how you count the contingent tranches, to settle claims brought by a coalition of roughly fifty-one US state attorneys general who accused the company of designing Facebook and Instagram to hook teenagers, mine their data, and lie about what it knew while doing so. It is, by a wide margin, the largest settlement any social media company has ever paid over harm to...

Caste Insult Behind Closed Doors: Meaning Of 'Place Within Public View' Under SC/ST Act”

The Supreme Court on August 20, 2026, quashed proceedings under Section 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. 1989 (SC/ST Act). Once again the definition of “place within public view” under the SC/ST Act came into spotlight through this judgment. The Supreme Court has previously delineated the scope of the term “place within public view” from various judgments. But is this explanation or interpretation really achieve the ultimate...

Swadeshi Jurisprudence And Recurring Legal Fallacy In Criminal Procedure

In 'Swadeshi Jurisprudence and the Colonial Afterlife of Order XXI', published in LiveLaw, it is observed that we have been handed a bamboo pole and told to dance upon it, and that we labour only at the dancing, falling and rising and adjusting our steps, each generation of practitioners trying to perform a little better than the last, but never asking whether the pole was ever a fit place to dance. Many prevalent laws and procedures exhibit the same discipline, out of which two loci classici...

MSME Amendment Act, 2026: Some Changes, Some Questions

The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development (Amendment) Act, 2026 comes twenty years after the original MSMED Act, 2006. In these twenty years, the way small businesses function has changed considerably. Digital payments, GST, online procurement, formal lending and technology-based business systems are now common even among smaller enterprises. So, a change in the law was expected. The amendment tries to address some old concerns, particularly delayed payments, registration,...

Genetic Data Processing Under DPDPA

Every human being carries a unique biological identifier that reveals far more than identity - genetic data.A genetic sequence can disclose an individual's ancestry, inherited diseases, predisposition to illness, familial relationships, and even information about generations yet unborn. Unlike a password or financial credential, genetic information cannot be changed once compromised. Therefore, a breach involving genetic data can have serious and irreversible consequences.The rapid expansion of...

Can An “Unrelated” Party Hide Related-Party Transaction? Understanding SEBI's “Purpose And Effect” Test

A related-party transaction (“RPT”) ordinarily appears to be a question of identification: if a listed entity enters into a transaction with a person or entity falling within the definition of a related party, the transaction is subjected to the approval, disclosure and oversight requirements prescribed under the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015 (“LODR Regulations”). The difficulty begins, however, when the related party does not appear anywhere in the...

Mineral Rights, Mineral Wrongs: Centre's Overreach On Mineral Taxation

On 25 July, 2024 by an 8:1 majority, a nine-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in the case of Mineral Area Development Authority and Anr. v. M/S Steel Authority of India & Anr. Ltd.; 2024 INSC 554 (The case or Judgment, hereinafter) held that States possess the power to levy tax on mines and minerals. The decision thereafter opened avenues for State legislatures to collect royalty, along with tax on major minerals, and on mineral-bearing land based on the value of the minerals...

Who Appoints Appointers? India's New Tribunal Commission Has Old Independence Problem

Parliament has taken tribunal appointments away from the ministries that used to control them. It has not yet explained why the body it built to guard that independence should itself remain an appointee of the executive. The Tribunals Reforms Act, 2026 answers a serious constitutional problem with a solution that is real but incomplete, and the incompleteness sits exactly where the reform's architecture is least secure.The problem the Act answers is old and well documented. For a decade and a...