Bar, Bench & Litigation

The Indian Express reported that 44 days after her arrest, while still in jail without bail and the court expected to give its order on 24 July:

Arguing for lawyer Janhavi Gadkar to be released on bail, her advocate said that the traffic authorities were maligning the law fraternity by putting up posters which show two cars colliding and depict a lawyer’s white collar with a caption “No one is above the law, not even the law”.

Her advocate added that there was no reason to “tamper” with evidence, if Gadkar was released. “Their investigation is all over. What is there to tamper with? They should and they must’ve taken adequate precaution. There is no allegation that I have tried to influence the police or tampered with evidence until now and there is no material to corroborate such allegations,” Gadkar’s lawyer Mahesh Sabnis argued.

Lawyers of Delhi’s district courts on Tuesday began an indefinite strike against the delay in passage of an amended bill in parliament on enhancement of pecuniary jurisdiction of trial courts.

Advocate RK Wadhwa, chairman of the coordination committee of all district courts bar associations, said lawyers would abstain from work till the bill is passed by parliament.

The lawyers’ association would wait for one week for passage of the bill and thereafter intensify the protest, he said.

The committee said that despite assurances, the government has not cleared the proposed bill enhancing the pecuniary jurisdiction to Rs.2 crore.

Judicial work in six city courts -- Patiala House, Tis Hazari, Rohini, Karkardooma, Saket and Dwarka -- was paralysed.

The AAP-run Delhi government on Tuesday decided to scrap Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor system introduced by Sheila Dikshit-led Congress government in the city, after the Delhi high court had declined to ban it in 2012.

“The decision to scrap BRT was taken in a meeting chaired by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal,” said Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra of the Aam Aadmi Party.

Dikshit-led Congress government had opened the BRT corridor in Delhi on April 20, 2008. This move was welcomed by environmentalists and several transport experts as a solution to Delhi’s traffic woes that would promote public transport.

As first reported by Legally India on Wednesday, Calcutta high court Justice Aniruddha Bose made history as probably the first high court chamber to install a permanent video camera on the request of advocate Deepak Khosla.

A Delhi court on Friday allowed environmentalist R.K. Pachauri, accused in a sexual harassment case, to visit all but two offices of TERI, with the complainant working in one of the offices.