The Bench and the Bar

The Bar Council of India (BCI) unanimously voted in S Prabhakaran as its new chairman yesterday, for the next four months. The BCI also unanimously voted in Prabhakaran’s predecessor Manan Kumar Mishra to preside at the BCI as its third-time chairman from May 2016 onwards.

NLU Delhi ‘s legal aid cell is fighting against two foetal-sex-determination doctors in the Delhi high court, for girl-child-protection NGO Beti Bachao Samiti. Senior advocate Sidhharth Luthra is representing the doctors – Sunil Fakay and Urvashi Fakay.

Two very important cases related to the power to appoint teachers and rules on when special leave petitions (SLPs) should be entertained, are scheduled to be heard by two Supreme Court’s constitution benches today under CJI TS Thakur’s new constitution bench schedules.

The Regional Transport Office (RTO) might revoke for life the driving licence of advocate Janhavi Gadkar, who is alleged to have killed two people in road rash, in a final order of RTO that will be drafted this month.

New Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur told it like it is, in a speech at a function hosted by the Bar Council of India (BCI).

In a notification issued on 7 January, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, has suggested that bulls may continue to be exhibited or trained as a performing animal, at events such as Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu and bullock cart races in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, Kerala and Gujarat in the manner by the customs of any community or practiced traditionally under the customs or as a part of culture, in any part of the country.

Madurai advocates association president W Peter Ramesh Kumar was asked to answer to contempt charges by the Madras high court after the high court felt his attitude was “one of confrontation”, reported PTI.

Ramesh is the president of the Madurai Bench High Court Advocates Association and he was one of 14 lawyers suspended by the Bar Council of India for violence.

A division bench at the Madras high court’s Madurai bench - justices V Ramasubramanian and N Kirubakaran - initiated suo motu contempt proceedings against him, asked him to file his reply by 19 January and rejected his request for eight weeks time to reply.

The fastest working out of 13 Supreme Court judges were justices AR Dave, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur, JS Khehar and Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur, while justice Dipak Misra was the slowest according to a basic arithmetic study commissioned by CJI Thakur, reported the Times of India.

CJI Thakur asked the Supreme Court registry to determine how each of 13 judges on the roster had performed in terms of disposal of cases, from July 2015 to December 2015, by simply subtracting the total number of cases the judge disposed of from the number of cases in which the judge issued notice.

The registry also documented the total number of cases before each of the 13 judges.

Other slow judges in the roster, after Dipak Misra, according to the study, were justices PC Ghose, V Sen, Kurian Joseph, F M I Kalifulla, M Y Eqbal, V G Gowda and J Chelameswar. All of these judges, and Misra, added to pendency instead of reducing it.

Jessica Lal murder case hostile witness Prem Sagar Manocha – the ballistic expert who was charged for perjury by the Delhi high court in May 2013 – was cleared of the charge by the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

A Division Bench of the Delhi high court comprising the chief justice G Rohini, and Justice Jayant Nath today set aside the order of the Single Judge of the High Court directing the Supreme Court registry to comply with the Central Information Commission’s directive to maintain records regarding the judgments pending, after being reserved by the benches.

In Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust and Ors vs R Ramanathan and Ors, the Supreme Court bench comprising justices Madan B Lokur and SA Bobde, refused to intervene in the dispute between the Aurobindo Ashram Trust and the respondents over the former’s failure to take steps to seek confiscation of copies of the book, “The Lives of Sri Aurobindo” written by Peter Heehs.

In a significant ruling, a federal judge in San Francisco has declined to give a macaque monkey the right to his famous selfie in Indonesia in 2011.

Delhi police commissioner BS Bassi said that the police was nowadays “committed to human rights” but bemoaned that the 1960s and 1970s were a bygone era in which criminals still feared the police.