Delhi high court

Internally sometimes called the youngest legal head of India’s largest and oldest biscuit maker, Britannia Industries head of legal Burhan Khalid has litigation on his platter, and a lot of it.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra wrote to the Law Commission yesterday, withdrawing the BCI resolution that had recommended a ban on lawyer strikes and heavy fines for professional misconduct, after possibly up to 4,000 lawyers marched to the BCI office demanding Mishra’s resignation.

IP powerhouse Singh & Singh & Lall & Sethi (SS&LS), just over two years after it was created in the merger of IP firms Singh & Singh and Lall & Sethi, will be breaking into two again after SS&LS managing partner Chander Lall is expected to get designated this year as a senior advocate by the Delhi high court.

The Delhi high court has bizarrely exempted state bar councils from the statutory duty to publish their meeting minutes online, on the ground that some of these minutes may contain third party information of a confidential nature.

Former Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju has begun blogging about the judiciary again, despite his run-in with the Supreme Court’s rather draconian contempt powers had left him on the ropes, giving a strategic unconditional apology (which the apex court accepted on 7 January, having asserted its dominance over its former brother judge).

For B4U Television’s director and head legal Natasha Fernandes, sustaining a small TV and movie distribution company’s business in the face of a regulatory threat to its main revenue model – advertisements – is the biggest challenge.

Luthra & Luthra has hired Bharat Chugh as a counsel in Delhi, according to its press release as reported Bar & Bench.

Delhi high court Justice Rajiv Endlaw has ordered three internet service providers (ISPs) to find out the identities behind 35 email accounts and three IP addresses that had allegedly been used a year ago to send allegedly defamatory emails about a Tata Motors Insurance Broking & Advisory Services chief executive Tarun Samant, as reported Mint and others.

Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA) president Kirti Uppal, who defeated incumbent president Rajiv Khosla in this year’s DHCBA polls by almost 300 votes, said his vote bank was comprised mostly of first generation lawyers with a practicing experience of five to seven years.

Kirti Uppal has defeated incumbent Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA) president Rajiv Khosla by nearly 300 votes in yesterday’s elections.

Arepalli Naga Babu - a former Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) scholar and 2016-graduate of NLU Odisha - has won the right to take a judicial services exam with additional time to compensate for his disability, after initially having been denied to even sit for the exam in the first place.

Senior counsel and Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has sent a letter to prime minister Narendra Modi, copying in the finance, law and commerce ministers, pleading with Modi to not challenge the BCI’s role in regulating the legal profession and the entry of foreign law firms and to bring the BCI back to the negotiating table about the future of the profession.

Tata Sons’ former chairman Cyrus Mistry, who was unexpectedly fired from the organisation on Monday, has reportedly decided to approach the Bombay high court challenging his dismissal, although we understand that no case has been filed yet.

A Supreme Court bench of justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Ashok Bhushan, last week, on 20 October, extended the deadline for submission of applications for the verification process of lawyers to 30 November 2016, making it clear that it would sanction no further delays.

Amity Delhi has moved to a more transparent and stringent system of attendance for students, but is functioning without an official head after student protests following the suicide of student Sushant Rohilla. Rohilla, who was allegedly harassed by the law school’s administration over attendance issues.

PDS Legal partner Deepak Chopra will join AZB & Partners in Delhi as a partner and the head of its tax litigation practice, according to a press release from the firm.

Clasis Law’s UK-headquartered best friend Clyde & Co has sued the Indian arm of integrated telecom infrastructure company Nu Tek, in the Delhi high court, for non-payment of Rs 2.1 crore ($315055) of the law firm’s dues.

Advocate Swathi Sukumar acting for Shamnad Basheer and other legal and social academics, won for a Delhi University photocopying shop in the Delhi high court, which dismissed the copyright suit of three international publishers against it, reported various media.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed that all first information reports (FIRs) involving cognizable offences must be uploaded on state police web sites within 24 hours of their registration.

On 17 August, before it broke for a long weekend of four days, a three-judge Supreme Court (SC) bench of justices Ranjan Gogoi, Prafulla Chandra Pant and AM Khanwilkar referred a challenge to its immunity from the Right to Information (RTI) Act to a five-judge constitution bench. The decision, made after a brief hearing, was a surprise as well as a disappointment.