News

In a huge setback to corporate honcho Anshuman S Ruia and Ravi S Ruia and their company Essar Teleholding, the Supreme Court today upheld their trial by the Special CBI court trying 2G scam cases, rejecting their plea that they should instead be tried by a magisterial court.

In a significant order, the social justice bench of the Supreme Court Justice Madan Lokur and Justice UU Lalit on Monday, 28 September, dismissed an application filed by the Government of Madhya Pradesh (GoMP) / Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA) seeking a ‘modification / clarification’ of the apex court’s previous judgements of 2000 and 2005, thereby denying right to land of a few thousand adult sons of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) affected farmers.

When the BJP formed the Government at the Centre in 2014 with an absolute majority of its own, it was widely expected that judicial activism, which was on the rise in the 1990s and 2000s when coalition governments with bare majorities were in power at the Centre, might well be on its decline.

AZB & Partners advised India’s largest doctor discovery platform Practo Technologies on its over $10m buy of smaller rival Qikwell Technologies India which was advised by Nishith Desai Associates (NDA).

AZB Mumbai partners Ashwin Ramanathan and Nilanjhana Singh and senior associate Parthasarathi Jha acted for Practo.

NDA Bangalore partner Vaibhav Parikh and associates Sangeeta Rana and Shreyas Bhushan acted for Qikwell.

Practo has bought four businesses in the last five months, including Qikwell, reported Mint according to which the other acquisitions were Insta Health, product outsourcing firm Genii and FitHo.

TMT Law Practice opened an office in Bhubaneshwar, its second in the eastern region after its recently opened Kolkata office. The firm will start operating in Bhubaneshwar from 1 October.

Delhi-based TMT managing partner Abhishek Malhotra will head the Bhubaneshwar office, which has two associates - operative senior associate Bagmisikha Puhan and senior associate Jadunath Behera - and is located in the city’s Bayababa Matha Lane. The office will focus on technology, media and telecommunication (TMT), intellectual property (IP) and litigation.

Malhotra commented in the press release: “With Odisha continuing to attract investment and industry there are likely to be issues related to these spheres of activity. Protection of Intellectual Property, negotiation and dispute resolution are services that are already in demand and local presence was thought necessary to address the emerging need.”

The firm now has five offices and three partners across India.

Luthra & Luthra has promoted six managing associates to partner level, reported Bar & Bench.

Rajani Singhania & Partners has promoted three principal associates to associate partner in Delhi: Abhimeet Sinha, Abhishek Kumar and Yaman Deep Kumar, according to a press release from the firm.

Sinha specialies in project finance and infrastructure, Abhishek Kumar and Yaman Deep Kumar who began their careers in 2007 with Singhania & Partners focus on litigation and arbitration.

Senior associate Sumit Gupta specialising in land acquisition and dispute resolution was promoted to principal associate.

AZB & Partners has promoted five of its lawyers to partner level after 12 months of partners leaving and joining in the Mumbai region of the firm.

Flipkart has hired Samsung’s former director and general counsel South and West Asia, Rajinder Sharma, as its group general counsel, while the company has been busy restructuring its operations with its recent buy-back of its logistics operations from WS Retail Services Pvt Ltd as reported by Mint on Tuesday (22 September).

When the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) published the Draft National Encryption Policy last week, it probably did not expect to have it withdrawn in just a few days' time. After facing a seething attack from all quarters, the IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, announced that the draft policy was not the government’s final view, and a revised policy would soon be published.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has suspended 15 lawyers who were allegedly involved in violence in the Madras high court, reported The Hindu and others.

When the petition filed by Delhi Grameen Samaj and others against the Central Government’s Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Ordinance came up in court No.4 on Thursday, 24 September, it was a foregone conclusion that Justice JS Khehar, and Justice R Banumathi who heard it, would consider it infructuous, as the ordinance had already lapsed.

R Sunder Rajan, the former chief of legal at GMR, has joined Bharti Airtel as its group general counsel (GC).