Delhi high court
Taking note of the deplorable state of district courts in the national capital, the Delhi high court on Wednesday asked lawyers and bar associations to lend a helping hand in keeping the court premises clean.
Ex-Medical Council of India (MCI) president Dr Ketan Desai is facing a Supreme Court probe into all manner of allegations into the future of the profession’s regulator.
The Delhi high court will soon transfer thousands of cases, mostly related to property disputes, to the district courts of the capital as the President has signed into law a bill which enhances the pecuniary jurisdiction of civil courts.
Parliament faced record-low levels of productivity this session, with mainly the Delhi pecuniary jurisdiction bill and cheque bouncing bill squeezing through.
German auto maker Audi was restrained, ex parte, by the Delhi high court from using the trademark “TT” on its leather goods, after Delhi-based garment maker TT Textiles sued it for using its “multi-product global brand” trademark, reported Indian Express.
TT Textiles, of the TT vests fame, filed a trademark infringement suit for damages of Rs 25 lakh against Audi for “selling car and the related accessories with the mark ‘TT’ clandestinely in Delhi.” Advocate Shilpa Jain was acting for TT in the high court.
TT Textiles has used the trademark TT since 1968 and now has 87 registrations in 65 countries, while its turnover in the financial year 2013 to 2014 was Rs 754 crore, according to the order.
Justice Najmi Waziri ordered:
“This Court is of the view that the plaintiffs have made out a prima facie case for an ex parte ad interim injunction and in case such an order is not passed at this stage, irreparable prejudice would be caused to them. The balance of convenience too lies in favour of the plaintiffs.”
The case will be heard next on 2 November.
A Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Madan Lokur has transferred to the Delhi high court the four-year old Rs 50 crore defamation suit by the Delhi-based Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) that was filed in Silchar, Assam, which had in 2011 passed an injunction against the Delhi-based publisher of The Caravan magazine for a hard-hitting profile of its founder Arindam Chaudhuri.
In Indian National Congress vs UOI, which came up before the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Bench today, the counsel for the Association for Democratic Reforms, Prashant Bhushan, alleged that both the Congress and the UOI suffer from conflict of interests in the case, in the face of a clear finding by the Delhi high court that both the Congress and the BJP had received crores as funding from foreign sources, and that there is not even an iota of doubt that the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 1976 was violated by both.
The Lok Sabha, on day 11 of the monsoon session, passed the Delhi High Court Amendment Bill, 2014 after years of wrangling and lobbying around the issue between the bar of the district court and the high courts in Delhi. The legislation increases the pecuniary jurisdiction of the High Court of Delhi from Rs 20 lakh (Rs 2m) to Rs 2 crores (Rs 20m).
The 2014 Delhi Judicial Service (DJS) exam’s controversial results were not stayed, but may be probed after the Supreme Court’s order in a writ today. The DJS will hold its interviews for selection of judges in Delhi on Thursday, as per schedule.
Things promised to return to normal in the Delhi high court on Monday after high-stakes drama last week, when the members of DHCBA received message through the newly formed SMS handle DHCBAS declaring that the strike was suspended.
Because the union government has ordered enquiry into allegations of foul play in the Delhi lower judicial services exam (DJS) 2014, two Delhi high court judges whose relatives cleared the DJS 2014 should not be assigned cases in which the union of India is a party, or these judges should be transferred, argued the Rohini bar association president, as reported by LiveLaw.
The association president Inder Singh Saroha wrote a letter to Delhi high court chief justice G Rohini stating:
to maintain the faith and confidence in the judiciary, it is absolutely necessary that the two sitting HC judges, whose kin have been reported to have cleared the said examination, should not be assigned cases in which union government is one of the parties as these judges could be influenced by the union government, which is stated to have ordered an enquiry into the matter. Or if possible judges be posted out of Delhi so that they may not influence the independent enquiry into the scam.
A number of candidates who did not clear the DJS exam this year filed right to information requests and made allegations of foul play in the conduct of the exam, suggesting that relatives of sitting judges had cleared the exam with help from the Delhi high court, as reported by Legally India.
One day after members of the Delhi High Court Bar Association received text messages that its president Rajiv Khosla had been suspended for alleged “anti–bar activity”, members were left confused when they received messages today that the DHCBA secretary Abhijat was suspended.
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.
Candidates for the controversial 2014 Delhi Judicial Service (DJS) exam have painstakingly cross-referenced a list of offspring and others close to Delhi high court judges against the 15 who passed the DJS exams, received a surprising RTI response, and established that 64 judges who had passed or topped judicial services exams in other states, failed in last year's DJS exam outright.