Officially Tamil: The Madras high court dismissed two cases after the acting advocate insisted on arguing in Tamil. While it has been a long-standing demand of the state to make Tamil as the official language, the bench told the advocate that constitutionally English is the official language of the Supreme Court and the high courts. High courts in Patna, Allahabad, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have been permitted by the Central government to conduct proceedings in Hindi under Article 348 (2) of the Constitution and Section 7 of the Official Languages Act [TOI]
NLUO funding model: To raise funds, NLUO Cuttack will soon offer a one-year programmes in hospital administration, medical law and ethics for doctors, contract negotiation and management for engineers, skill development for lawyers, VC V Nagaraj told the New Indian Express. “This will help our faculty get additional resources and 20 to 25 per cent of it will go to the institution’s corpus because the projects would come through the institution,” he said.
Mahrashtra pendency: Pendency in crimes-against-women cases in Mumbai courts increased by 40 per cent since 2008 to 50,000 cases in May end this year. There was a 12 per cent rise in the pendency of corruption cases in Bombay to 3,008, and the pendency is highest in Motor Accident claims which are 90,000 – a 6 per cent drop since 2008 [TOI]
International porn: The Rajya Sabha’s Committee on Petitions was presented with a plea to amend the Information Technology Act to completely ban pornography since it is “distorting and distressing society”, but the committee claims it would find it difficult to ban international porn websites since they are hosted outside India and claim to operate under US laws [TOI]
Maha disobedient: “In Maharashtra, by and large, orders passed by state commissions and tribunals are either not implemented or taken note of only after contempt notices are issued against the bureaucrats concerned,” reports the [TOI]
Cut KAT? A petition in the Kerala High Court sought the abolition of the Kerala Administrative Tribunal (KAT) as an unnecessary expense on the state exchequer, even as various advocate organisations demanded additional bench of KAT in the state. The KAT has solved 1,816 out of 2,653 cases filed in 2012; 673 out of 1,429 cases filed in 2013; and 1,635 cases forwarded from the high court [TOI]
Judge retires: Madras high court justice Elipe Dharma Rao – the judge to whom North Chennai reportedly owes its dust-freeness after he banned Chennai airport from handling dusty cargo such as coal and iron ore – retired on 14 July. [TOI]