Supreme Court

A group of lawyers analysed 884 judgments handed down by the Supreme Court in the 2014 calendar year and found that only 64, or 7 per cent, involved any substantive constitutional issues.

Sahara’s deal with Mirach Capital Group to borrow $2bn to bail out the group’s supremo Subrata Roy - jailed by the Supreme Court for contempt of court since nearly a year - might be falling apart after a Reuters exclusive yesterday revealed that a Bank of America guarantee letter backing the loan had been forged.

This is likely to leave Roy unable to scrape together enough money to meet the mammoth bail amount, after a series of senior counsel have failed to get him out.

Sahara issued a statement that the letter had been forged and that the company felt “cheated in such an adverse environment against us”, strongly condemned “such inhuman conduct of [Mirach]” and that “Sahara will not spare them” in taking up “suitable legal proceedings”, reported Mint in a detailed story.

Update: Mirach has denied that it forged any guarantee documents, reported PTI

Pseudonyms such as “Obama” and “Putin” will no longer be available to Chinese citizens who wish to hide their identity on the internet, following new internet restrictions implemented by the country’s authorities

Since 2011 the Supreme Court of India seems to have got the message that relying on Wikipedia too much is simply not a good idea; India’s high courts? Not so much...

Read more of Alok Prasanna Kumar’s research on Livemint, in association with Legally India.

Ex-Supreme Court judge and high court chief justice Markandey Katju wrote on his blog that he had once spiked his own recommendation of a high court lawyer for judgeship, because that “male lawyer was having a live in relationship with a lady lawyer to whom he was not married. They were often seen openly going to parties, functions and restaurants together. Due to this advice I dropped the idea of recommending the name of that lawyer for Judgeship of the High Court.” Satyam Bruyat

When people later criticised his decision afterwards, he wrote:

My reply was that while I myself am fairly modern, Indian society is largely still conservative, and largely still does not approve of live in relationship, though it is not illegal.. While lawyers can have live in relationship, it is as yet not ethically permissible to Judges.

So if you want to be judge, please do not have a live in relationship

In 2010, Katju decided in the Supreme Court that “Indian society is changing, and this change has been reflected and recognized by Parliament by enacting The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005”, accepting that “relationship in the nature of marriage” could potentially also include “live in relationships”. Hat-tip @mohitsingh8

After the Supreme Court had rejected all appeals against the convict in the Noida-based Nithari killings, Surinder Koli, the Allahabad high court commuted his death sentence in public interest litigation (PIL) of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR).

Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PKS Baghel commuted his sentence to life in prison on the basis of the Uttar Pradesh governor’s three-and-a-half year delay in disposing his mercy petition and the “misapplication” of rules, reported The Hindu

Supreme Court senior counsel Harish Salve and KK Venugopal are set to be awarded Padma awards, with Venugopal to receive a Padma Vibhushans, India’s second-highest civilian honour, reported Zee and others.