Delhi high court

Delhi University (DU) law students should not suffer in the ongoing tussle between the Bar Council of India (BCI) and DU’s law centres over campus infrastructure, said the Delhi high court yesterday.

The Rajya Sabha yesterday deferred passing the bill to increase the pecuniary jurisdiction of the Delhi high court, with some members saying that the reform should be clubbed with pending legislation to create commercial divisions in high courts (the Commercial Division of High Courts Bill 2009), with law minister DV Sadananda Gowda conceding to the demands, reported the PTI.

Two politicians by the JD(U) and the BJP made the suggestion, which Gowda seemed happy to accept according to the report.

The commercial divisions bill is currently being redrafted in line with law commission recommendations that have been taken up by the government in the budget.

A series of strikes for and against the bill by bar associations have plagued Delhi, with high court lawyers most recently striking in December 2014, giving six reasons that they are against the measure, which would move matters with a value of less than below Rs 2 crore from the Delhi high court to the district court.

Update: The Rajya Sabha debates stated the following:

Legally India investigates in Mint how special interests have succeeded at and could end up indefinitely stalling reform of legal services, despite the government's best laid intentions.

The Delhi high court has lifted its order restraining publication of reports on the alleged harassment complaint joint winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Rajendra K Pachauri.

The Delhi high court yesterday called the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) the “Delhi Destruct Authority” while saying that the land-owning agency and other departments are not concerned about Delhi.

“You all are not concerned about Delhi. All of you should be renamed. DDA should be renamed Delhi Destruct Authority,” said a division bench of justices BD Ahmed and Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva.

The court’s observation came while hearing a PIL that said there was a forest area in Tughlakabad and birds and animals were dying because of poisonous and polluted water released from illegal factories in the area.

The judges had thundered in the case earlier this month that the city’s air should be cleaned desperately by some responsible governmental authority.

The discharge has created an “artificial lake” and the polluted water “is spreading in the whole forest”, the plea filed by resident Manoj Kumar said. It said animals were dying on a large scale.

The court wanted to know which government body is responsible for looking into the issue of contaminated water and whether the water body is a natural lake or not but none of the departments could answer the court’s query.

The court also expressed unhappiness on the meeting held on Jan 29 on court’s earlier direction to chalk out remedial measures to clean the contaminated water in the Tughlakabad Ridge area. It had also asked the DDA to explore the possibility of converting the polluted artificial lake and 200 acres of surrounding land behind the Tughlaqabad Fort into a biodiversity park on the lines of the Yamuna biodiversity park.

“None if them appears to be aware as to what has to be done... All these concerned bodies don’t know who are responsible,” said the bench Wednesday as it added the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the South Delhi Municipal Committee and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee as parties in the case.

The bench issued notice to ASI, SDMC and DPCC and sought their responses by March 4. It also asked DDA to submit a map indicating the extent of the water body and its location along with layout plan of the surrounding park.