Losing Award, Keeping Shield: Section 9 Limits

After Home Care Retail Marts[1], the Supreme Court's latest Section 9 decision poses a tougher question: once the losing party is allowed legal protection, how far may the court go without turning interim protection into an appeal against the award?The concept of arbitration rests on finality. Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 ("the Act") provides the statutory framework for challenging an award, while Section 36 governs its enforcement subject to the statutory scheme....

Conditions, Not Custody: What Bail Conditions Are For And How Far They May Go

On 14 July 2026, a Magistrate at Kalyan, Maharashtra granted bail to a sitting corporator, accused of assaulting three doctors on duty at a municipal hospital, on a bond of Rs. 50,000 subject to four routine bail conditions. Three days later, three of his co-accused were also released on parity. On 18 July 2026, a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court, acting on its own motion, stayed both orders and directed the corporator to surrender. The remaining three accused had not yet been released....

3-Year Practice To 1-Year : Who Gets To Write The Rules Of The Game For Judicial Services?

The dynamic rules of the gameOn August 21, a divided Bench of the Supreme Court modified the three-year Bar practice requirement a little over fifteen months after it had been restored. As per the majority judgment, for recruitments notified from April 1, 2027, candidates will require one year of actual practice, followed, upon selection, by one year of training at a State Judicial Academy and one year of structured clerkship. For the transitional period, candidates have been permitted to apply...

Colonial Policing In Constitutional Democracy

The last few months have rekindled an important debate in the country. What we have witnessed in the national capital and elsewhere ought to make us reconsider whether the paradigms that continue to govern our policing are suited to the constitutional democracy we have become. It is time that we reconsider if the purpose of our policing has to be fundamentally coercive. A closer look explains why the colonial inheritance of Indian policing rationalizes force being so deeply embedded in the...

Debit Freezing Of Bank Accounts: Shift From Seizure To Attachment

Criminal process has always drawn a sharp line between two very different state actions over crime property: taking custody of it to preserve evidence, and to ensure that whoever is ultimately found entitled to it actually gets it. The first is seizure, and the second is Attachment. For decades, the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (CrPC) gave police officers only the first tool by way of section 102 CrPC. Investigating agencies and courts stretched that single provision to also perform the second...

When Judge Errs: What Three Decades Of Case Law Reveal About India's Unpublished Disciplinary Record

Not one High Court in India publishes a code of conduct for its judges. Only the Madras High Court discloses anything about the conduct that can be complained against, a general notice on bribery, and only two High Courts, Tripura and Jammu & Kashmir, have ever disclosed an order imposing a sanction on a judge; the other 23 scored zero. These are among the findings of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and JALDI's Judicial Transparency Index, released on August 1, 2026, which tested all 25...

There's Limit To Cross-Examination

There are “Dirty minds not clothes”, the Delhi High Court has recently reiterated an important principle in sexual-offence jurisprudence: the personal choices of a survivor cannot be placed on trial in an attempt to determine whether an offence was committed. In a judgment delivered in the State (NCT of Delhi) Vs. Sajid Ali on August 10, 2026, Justice Chandrasekharan Sudha overturned the acquittal of the accused recorded by the trial court and found the accused guilty on the evidence before the...

Dark Patterns And Data Protection: What PhysicsWallah Order Reveals About India's Digital Regulatory Gap

On June 1, 2026, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) penalised PhysicsWallah Limited with ₹5 lakh for deployment of dark patterns on its platform. The order narrates that PhysicsWallah maintained a pre-ticked “Donate for PW Foundation” checkbox which added ₹10 to the final checkout bill unless the user affirmatively unchecks it. The order also found that the “free courses” that PhysicsWallah offered were inaccessible unless every user affirmatively surrenders their phone number and...

Abuse Of Dominance In Digital Markets: Analysing Apple's App Store Practices Under Competition Act, 2002

The digital economy is growing at a fast rate and has changed the nature of markets in ways that have posed new and unanticipated questions for legal systems, just a decade ago. The crux of this change is the rise of the large technology firms and their domination over digital ecosystems, which has caused significant controversy with regulators around the world. It has become a debate in India with the Competition Commission of India's probe into the App Store practices of Apple. The problem is...

Disclosure Without Verification: Reassessing India's Country-Of-Origin Rule For E-Commerce

Online marketplaces have fundamentally reshaped the way consumers purchase goods. Unlike conventional retail, consumers purchasing through e-commerce platforms cannot physically examine a product or its packaging before completing a transaction. Information displayed on the marketplace interface therefore becomes the primary basis on which consumers assess the product, including its origin, quality and suitability. Among these statutory disclosures, Country of Origin (COO) information assumes...

Before You Burn Down Your Dreams, Remember You Can't Build Them Alone

We live in a world that loves the story of the lone genius the passionate artist who fights big corporations, refuses to back down, and stays true to their vision no matter what. In the movie Mollywood Times, director Abhinav Sunder Nayak and actor Naslen take this famous story and show us its dark, hidden side.Naslen plays Vineeth Madhavan, a young filmmaker who wants to revolutionize Malayalam cinema with his horror movies. But Vineeth does not just want to make films but he wants total...

Rethinking "Compassionate Appointment"

Recently, Tamil Nadu's newly elected Chief Minister personally handed out thirty one appointment orders to government service. The appointees had lost a family member in the stampede at the election rally in Karur in September 2025, a tragedy that killed 41 people. Rally was organised by the Chief Minister's Party. On its face, it was an act of grace. The State stepping in to help families who suffered an unimaginable loss. But in about three week, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court set...