The Bench and the Bar

S&R Associates Delhi partner Rajat Sethi has moved to the Mumbai office of the firm as a “strategic decision” to bolster the corporate and private equity practice of the firm, reported Bar & Bench.

His move, increasing the partner headcount in Mumbai to three and reducing Delhi to five partners based there, follows Legally India reporting in 2010 that the firm’s founding partner Sandip Bhagat had moved from Delhi to Mumbai to set up in the city.

Metropolitan Magistrate Ankita Lal today transferred the alleged midnight raid case against former Delhi law minister Somnath Bharti to a higher court after being annoyed by defence counsel Deepak Khosla.

A circular issued by Madras high court registrar General P Kalaiyarasan, as agreed to by all the bar associations in the city, said that lawyers should now file their cases without folding the case papers in half along the longer side, reported The Hindu.

The so-called ‘flat filing system’ was a “wonderful system that will help judges in knowing the day-to-day development of the case by glancing through the first few pages itself”, Isaac Mohanlal, president of the Madurai Bench of the Madras high court Bar Association (MMBA) told the paper.

The court reportedly also introduced an obligation to translate all vernacular documents into English, which Mohanlal was less enthusiastic about as adding to cost and time, according to the report. [Hat-tip @khushant4 on Twitter]

"The judges are serious about rendering speedy justice to litigants. In most cases, the law has already been succinctly laid down and does not require further arguments to delay a verdict. Those cases need to be decided fast with crisp judgments focusing only on facts in the backdrop of the already laid down law,” a Supreme Court source told the Times of India.

The paper reported that SC judges have been “informally circulating” the message to keep judgments short and sweet under the new Chief Justice of India (CJI) HL Dattu, who is also (as pretty much every other CJI before him) trying to find ways of tackling the pendency problem.

A Delhi high court judge initiated contempt proceedings and ordered injunction against a legal news magazine over a story alleging links between his son and a late-opening night club.

An Andhra Pradesh law student was arrested under the IT Act, presumably section 66A, and the IPC, for allegedly posting a comment on Facebook in English and Telugu that stated “I love u hudhoodh”, referring to the destructive cyclone and noting that it was taking revenge against “betrayers”, reported The Hindu, with NDTV translating it as: "I love you hudhud for nature having selectively punished those who cheated - feeling God is there".

A CID press release said that he “posted irresponsible anti-people comments in the Facebook after the natural disaster Hududh”. The student is reportedly a member of the YSR Congress Party, which is in opposition in AP