Legal Pulse

J Sagar Associates (JSA) partner Lalit Kumar has set out the important new sections of the Companies Act that were yesterday announced by the MCA and would be notified and come into force on 1 April.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has fined Google Rs 1 crore for not complying with "instructions" to furnish documents in the investigation against it, a CCI spokesperson told Mint.

Google is facing a complaint by Matrimony.com and the Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) for allegedly abusing its market dominance in online search [Mint] [Hindu Business Line]

The Competition Appellate Tribunal (Compat) has rejected an appeal by Jitendra Bhargava, a former executive director Air India, who complained that the Competition Commission had cleared the merger between the two airlines without a detailed assessment.

Archana Balasubramanian, Partner, Agama Law Associates argues that the new Companies Act corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy is deeply flawed at nearly every level.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered the director general to investigate Coal India and Western Coalfields Limited for prima facie having imposed unfair terms and conditions when selling coal to soda ash maker GHCL Limited, which complained to the CCI.

The CCI's director general should investigate the potential violation of section 4(2)(a)(i) of the Competition Act (abuse of dominant position by directly or indirectly imposing unfair or discriminatory condition in purchase or sale of goods or service) within 60 days, said four members of the commission in an order dated 11 March and published on the CCI's website today. [CCI Order]

Advocate Kshitiz Karjee argues that India is in dire need of regulations to protect witnesses and prevent them from turning hostile in the face of an abysmal system.

Jindal Global Law School assistant professor Shiladitya Rakshit explains how wills work and why you should probably get one.

The CCI has fined Mumbai's Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital with a Rs 3.81 crore fine for entering into an anti-competitive agreement  with a  stem cell bank.

Legally India editor Kian Ganz was in an online Q&A today, fielding some excellent and insightful questions on freedom of speech for an hour from CNN-IBN’s viewers. It was fun! Do read and let us know your thoughts.

JSA partner Lalit Kumar writes that he is pleased with some of the developments coming from India’s regulators to encourage FDI, but much more needs to be done this year if India wants to dream of recovering foreign investor goodwill.

The chilling effect of the Delhi high court’s gag order it the Swatanter Kumar case is only the latest in a long line of examples of the media losing out in its fight to report on the judiciary, argues advocate Prashant Reddy.

Members of Nalsar Hyderabad's Centre for Disability Studies have marked up the leaked draft of the Cabinet’s watered-down Disability Rights Bill 2013, explaining in detail some of the sections that they feel makes “mincemeat” of the rights of disabled persons.

Nalsar Hyderabad has called on politicians to scrap the cabinet draft of the Disability Rights Bill that was leaked to activists in late January 2014, and which undoes much of the positive proposals put forward in the original committee’s codification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that India ratified in 2007.

Countering Alok Prasanna Kumar’s counter-argument earlier this week, Sudhir Krishnaswamy and Shishir Bail counter that a presidential reference remains the best course of action to remedy the Supreme Court’s reversal of the Delhi high court’s judgement that struck down section 377.

Advocate Alok Prasanna Kumar argues against a presidential reference as a tool to cure Koushal v Naz, as suggested in a previous column by Sudhir Krishnaswamy and Shishir Bail.

Today the Supreme Court has rejected a review of its own Section 377 judgment. A curative petition too will likely end in failure, given the high rate of rejection for review and curative petitions. But while there is much wrong with the Koushal v Naz judgment, we should not give in to the temptation that Section 377 cannot be struck down by a Constitutional Court and must instead be left to Parliament to repeal. For one, there isn’t even a cogent argument to that effect you will find on reading the Supreme Court of India’s judgment in Koushal.