The Bench and the Bar

We rereported earlier this week that the SpicyIP blog was cited by Bombay high court Justice Gautam Patel as having made a persuasive argument about not issuing blanket bans of websites against persons unknown (John Doe), in-part swaying Patel to only issue a narrow block of specific URLs on file sharing websites.

The Gujarat high court today granted bail to Patidar agitation spearhead Hardik Patel in two sedition cases on the condition that he will stay outside the state for six months.

The much awaited Delhi-Centre turf war case was finally heard today at court No 4 around noon as item 64, with the bench of justices Dipak Misra and UU Lalit giving the Delhi Government's counsel, Indira Jaising, enough opportunity to make her submissions, but without compromising its position that it would not direct the high court to first decide the jurisdiction issue.

"Legal education needs to be improved and the Bar Council of India needs to reform itself," Law Commission chairman and retired Supreme Court judge Balbir Singh Chauhan told the Economic Times in an exclusive interview.

A Supreme Court bench of justices Anil R Dave, Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel yesterday asked the Law Commission to consider whether the Bar Council of India (BCI) is a suitable regulator of the legal profession within six months.

Retired Supreme Court Judge N Santosh Hegde said, according to NDTV:

>To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that an Indian court has taken note of criticism embodied in a web article into cognizance while crafting its opinion. Justice Patel’s reaffirmation of the proposition that the Internet contains a vast body of sound academic writing, it is hoped, will make his brother and sister judges more open to the idea of taking judicial notice of views that are well-founded, albeit expressed in traditionally unconventional fora.<

On 4 July, the Supreme Court bench comprising justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan, assigned senior advocate, Rajeev Dhavan, an interesting assignment to be executed before 1 August.

The judges of the subordinate courts in Telangana, who were on mass leave since last week, resumed work on Wednesday.

The Union Cabinet at its meeting in Delhi today with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the chair approved the introduction of a bill to rename high courts named after cities they are located in, consequent to cities' name being changed.

The Tamil novel, "Madhorubagan", authored by Perumal Murugan, and translated into English as "One Part Woman" which received literary awards, was alleged to narrate non-existent conventions that sought to tarnish the image of populace of the area.

The Supreme Court today issued notice to the Centre, the Department of Bio-Technology (DBT) and Christian Medical College, Vellore in a PIL filed by S Srinivasan seeking complete centre-wise results of the clinical trial of anti-diarrhea vaccine Rotavac.

The Delhi-Centre turf war case, titled Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi vs Union of India, which was listed as item 45 at court no 2, after Justice Khehar-Arun Mishra bench recused from hearing it yesterday, suffered another phase of uncertainty this morning. At the mentioning time at Court No.2, one of the Judges on the bench at court No 2, Justice L Nageswara Rao recused himself from hearing the case for undisclosed reasons.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday admitted a plea by the Maharashtra government challenging the acquittal of Hindi film star Salman Khan in a 2002 hit-and-run case.

Item 72, listed as the last case before justices JS Khehar and Arun Mishra at Court No.3, was the one which everyone was waiting for.

Ignoring the appeals of Governor ESL Narasimhan and Chief Justice of India TS Thakur, lawyers in Telangana today decided to continue their strike till their demands including bifurcation of the high court were met.