High Courts Weekly Round-Up

Bombay High Court

The Bombay High Court recently dismissed a petition filed by one Mohammad Imran, who challenged the cancellation of his selection to the post of Civil Judge Junior Division and Judicial Magistrate First Class citing an unfavourable police verification report.

Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court, on Wednesday, quashed a decision of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) which had refused to certify for public viewing a documentary chronicling the 2014 campaign for the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat involving Prime Minister Narendra Modi, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal and Congress candidate Ajay Rai.

The High Court decided not to review its decision directing the release of Bollywood film ‘ Mohalla Assi ’. Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva dismissed the review petition moved by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) urging the court to relook into its December 11, 2012, decision by which he had directed the release of the film with appropriate viewer certificate while doing away with nine out of 10 cuts suggested by CBFC.

The High Court on Thursday commuted the death sentence of two of the three convicts in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case, while confirming the life term awarded by the trial court to the third convict as it held that the crime could not be characterised as the “rarest of rare” warranting the award of capital punishment.

After remaining stayed for three long years, the defamation case filed by journalist Vir Sanghvi against Outlook Media Pvt Ltd revolving around conversation in the 2G tapes will see light again with the Delhi High Court setting aside the order of a trial court adjourning the proceedings sine die and further directing that the matter be concluded preferably within a period of one year.

In a path breaking decision, the High Court on Friday opened the gates for women to enter the Territorial Army. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar held that the impugned advertisements imposing a blanket bar on appointment of women to both departmental and non-departmental battalions of the Territorial Army without any credible, reasonable or compelling justification for imposing such restrictions.

Gujarat High Court

The Gujarat High Court upheld the Gujarat Self-Financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act, 2017, to check excessive fee and profiteering by schools by fixing the maximum limit for pre­-primary and primary schools, secondary and higher secondary schools (general stream) and higher secondary schools (science stream) at Rs 15,000, Rs 25,000 and Rs 27,000, respectively.

Jammu & Kashmir High Court

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court reiterated the need to categorize cases relating to undertrial prisoners as a priority sector litigation. Justice MK Hanjura made this observation while rejecting bail plea of an accused who is in custody for the past eight years. The accused’s contention was that till now, nothing incriminating has surfaced as against him in the evidence recorded by the trial court.

Madras High Court

Almost a fortnight after the Kerala High Court upheld a woman’s fundamental right to dignity as a mother, the Madras High Court said it is the fundamental right of a lady to give birth to a child and nurture him and maternity leave period should be deemed to be the service period. Justice N Kirubakaran has held that any rule or law which holds that maternity leave has to be excluded from the period of service is “null and void”, while emphasising on the importance of maternity leaves for proper rest post-delivery to enable a mother to become “real mother”.

The High Court stayed till March 1 the procedure set out by it for filing vakalat to weed out fake advocates which called upon all advocates to mandatorily furnish their enrolment IDs and photographs while filing vakalat.

The High Court posed a query before the Centre as to why it cannot bring an Act making it obligatory on the part of women to breastfeed as has been done by the UAE government by having mandatory breastfeeding clause in the new UAE Child Rights law.

Uttarakhand High Court

While confirming the death sentence handed down to a man for raping and murdering an 8-year-old girl last year, the Uttarakhand High Court on Friday recommended the state government to enact in three months a suitable legislation for awarding death sentence to those found guilty of raping girls of 15 years or below.