Anup Surendranath
NUJS Kolkata, Nalsar Hyderabad, NLU Delhi. NLU Odisha and NLUJAA Assam have jointly launched a legal aid-style clinic called Parichay, to help those stripped of Indian nationality under the controversial _National Register of Citizens (NRC)_regime.
NLU Delhi’s Centre on the Death Penalty, which has produced a considerable number of influential reports and assisted in representing numerous death row prisoners, has widened its focus and re-branded to become Project 39A.
For the first time, NLU Delhi’s Centre on the Death Penalty has analysed death penalties across lower courts and released a report, which suggests a picture in which the judiciary ordering a convict killed seems more subject to randomness than an evolving jurisprudence or overarching policy.
On 11 March, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, comprising justices Ranjan Gogoi, Arun Mishra and Prafulla C Pant, after hearing the review petition of three convicts in the 2000 bus burning at Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu, case in the open court, commuted their death sentences to life sentences.
As Chief Justice of India (CJI), Justice HL Dattu appeared to be a man in a hurry. However, despite having held the office for a near eternity compared to many other recent CJIs, what he has managed to achieve as a judge and administrator in that time is questionable.
At a discussion on the Supreme Court’s recent judgment quashing the 99th Amendment Act and the NJAC Act, eminent academic, Professor Upendra Baxi, defended the judgment, but expected nothing much to come out of the ongoing hearing on reforming the collegium.
The Supreme Court’s secretary general VSR Avadhani has issued a press release that its former deputy registrar (research), Anup Surendranath, had resigned “on his own request as he wanted to pursue his interest in research projects in which he is involved in”.
“What was played out this week at the Supreme Court was the proverbial final nail,” said Surendranath.
Chief Justice of India (CJI) HL Dattu is not far from matching a new record: since he became CJI on 28 September 2014, he has confirmed the death sentences of 10 persons in five cases.
The Supreme Court is for the second time in its history attempting to create its own dedicated intellectual and institutional research unit with the appointment of NLU Delhi assistant professor Anup Surendranath to the post of deputy registrar (research).
In today’s edition of Mint: The success story of the NLU model has been spun mainly around two factors: the impressive employment statistics and enormous salaries offered to students from top NLUs and the ability of few alumni to gain admission to the world’s top law school, argue Anup Surendranath and Chinmayi Arun.