The Bench and the Bar

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said his government has almost prepared the Jan Lokayukta Bill’s draft and planned to present it in the next session of the state assembly.

“Jan Lokayukta Bill (is) almost ready. We should be able to present it in next session of assembly,” Kejriwal tweeted.

Delhi government officials confirmed that the draft of the bill has been prepared.

“Draft of the bill has been completed. Some final touches are being given to it. A team under Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia is working hard in this connection,” an official told IANS

Kejriwal government in its previous 49-day tenure had resigned after failing to get the bill passed in the Delhi Assembly last year.

The AAP, which returned to power by winning 67 of the 70 seats in the assembly elections, had positioned the Jan Lokayukta Bill as one of its key poll promises.

The bill was earlier scheduled to be tabled in the Budget session of the assembly in June.

The bill was to be tabled in the assembly in June but at that time the city government and Lt Governor Najeeb Jung were engaged in a bittter row over the transfer of bureaucrats, and the matter had reached President Pranab Mukherjee, the Supreme Court and the Delhi high court.

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.

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.

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.

The government may have to hasten its efforts to define the termonline marketplace and also explicitly mention what constitutes retail and wholesale trading on such platforms after the Delhi high court issued a notice seeking its reply to a petition filed by a body of offline (or brick-and-mortar) retailers.

reported Mint and others.

The Gujarat government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that sacked state cadre IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, accused of hacking the email of its former law officer, could not ask which agency would undertake an investigation and how it would do so.

Association Of the Victims of Uphaar Tragedy president, Neelam Krishnamoorthy expressed dismay over the reasoned judgment delivered by Justices Anil R Dave, Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel yesterday (Wednesday, September 23) in the Uphaar criminal appeal.

The Supreme Court has said that the magnitude of the Uphaar fire tragedy may call for “higher sentence” but it could not go beyond the choices under the law while sentencing brothers and real estate barons Sushil and Gopal Ansal who own the Uphaar cinema hall, represented by senior counsel Ram Jethmalani.

The Delhi high court on Tuesday dismissed a PIL seeking cancellation of the visa given by government to controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen for allegedly violating Foreigners Act by preparing scripts for a film and a serial here.

A division bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath refused to entertain the plea, saying there was no public interest in the matter.

NGO All India Human Rights and Social Justice Front claimed Nasreen had indulged in “anti-national activities” by preparing the script for a TV serial, which was to be aired in West Bengal in 2013 but could not be screened on Bangla channel due to protests by some religious groups. She had also scripted a Bengali film “Nirbashito”, purportedly based on her life, which was shown at the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2014, claimed the plea.

The plea said that the activities were in violation of the statute which prohibited preparing scripts for films and serials by a foreigner without permission from the government. It also sought prosecution of Nasreen for violating the Foreigners Order of 1948 and the Foreigners Act of 1946.