Supreme Court
Senior counsel Fali Nariman has added another to the four public interest litigations (PILs) against the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC), which will be heard on Monday.
Together with advocate Subhash Sharma, he claimed that the constitutional amendment “severely affects and damages the basic structure of the Constitution viz the independence of the judiciary” and gives “unbridled power” to parliament, reported the Indian Express.
Allowing for any two out of three non-judicial members of the NJAC to scuttle appointments would take away from primacy of the opinion of the three senior Supreme Court judges on the NJAC. The law was counter to the nine-judge constitution bench judgment in the so-called Second Judges case - one of three cases that was fundamental in the establishment of the collegium system.
Governor files petition against NaMo for pushing out governors: Uttarakhand Governor Aziz Qureshi has filed a writ under Articles 155 and 156(1) of the Constitution against Narendra Modi and his government for pushing him (and other governors) out of their constitutional positions. He will be arguing before a three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) RM Lodha, that he could only be sacked by the president and with valid cause because a governor is not an employee of the Union government. [Indian Express]
CBI court grants A Raja, business bigwigs bail in 2G-Kalaignar TV case: A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court has granted Rs 5 lakh bail to politicians A Raja, Kanimozhi, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables directors Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal, Kalaignar TV MD Sharad Kumar, Bollywood producer Karim Morani and P Amirtham in a money laundering case related to the 2G scam. The case alleges that Rs 200 crore were paid to Kalaignar TV, owned by the DMK party, to grant telecom licences to companies of the DB Group [Indian Express]
Death of planning commission, long live NDRC? What would the new planning commission mooted by Narendra Modi look like, experts speculate in [Mint]
BCI chairman should sit on JAC, says Rajiv Khosla: Delhi High Court Bar Association’s (DHCBA) president Rajiv Kohosla has said he wants the Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman to have a seat on the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC), several days after parliament passed the NJAC Act.
SC PIL looks into coaching centres: Centre tells Supreme Court that it can’t regulate private entrance coaching centres for engineering, medicine or other subjects, in a PIL filed by the CPI(M) party’s student wing [The Hindu]
Court orders police to free Manipur hunger striker again: Manipur East sessions court released the world’s longest hunger striker Irom Sharmila from jail for what her captors allege is an attempt to commit suicide by hunger strike. However, in the last 13 years and nine months, she had often been released by the courts and arrested again by the police for continuing with her hunger strike against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, reported [Scroll]
SC sweeps aside SCBA petition vs new SC Rules: The Supreme Court has refused the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) plea before it to amend the new Supreme Court Rules 2013 that were set to come into force on 19 August, which were allegedly introduced without consultation with the bar [The Hindu]
Bus accident victim gets Rs 12 lakh compensation in tribunal: The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) in UP awarded the damages against the bus driver, DTC and the insurance company for causing 60 per cent disability in the plaintiff’s left leg [PTI]
Faizan Mustafa wins something: Nalsar Hyderabad vice chancellor wins South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) award for best law teacher that was decided by a “high-powered jury”, reported [The Hindu] and others. It will be conferred by the law minister in future.
A petition in the Supreme Court pleaded for a constitutional amendment to make Hindi an official language to conduct high and apex court proceedings in.
A Supreme Court bench headed by Justice HL Dattu issued notice to the government about the petition that was filed by advocate Shiv Sagar Tiwari, who argued that English was a British colonial legacy and “Ghulami Bhasha” (a language of slavery), reported the PTI:
Time has now come that language of the Supreme Court should be ‘rashtra bhasha’ as defined under Article 343 of the Constitution and it has to be amended.
Justices Abhay Manohar Sapre, R Banumathi and Prafulla Chandra Pant, together with former senior counsel UU Lalit today took up their post as Supreme Court judges to take the bench strength of the apex court up to 30 out of 31 sanctioned judges. PTI
Supreme Court justices TS Thakur and Anil R Dave asked Gopal Subramanium to reconsider his recusal as the amicus curiae in the Padmanabhaswamy temple treasure case, because he had already put significant work into the case, reported The Hindu.
Subramanium had announced, as reported on 5 August, that he would withdraw from the case.
In June Subramanium had bowed out of the Supreme Court judgeship nomination process after pressure from the government, vowing that out of a sense of propriety, he therefore wouldn’t practice in the Supreme Court until the current Chief Justice of India (CJI) RM Lodha retired. In July he also rejected the Supreme Court’s plea to act as the special public prosecutor in the coal scam cases.
His report in the temple case was harshly critical of the temple’s administrators and the royal family, having found a web of trusts, bank accounts, and a lot of silver, gold and a gold plating machine during his lengthy investigation of the temple. Senior advocate Harish Salve is appearing for the royal family, with KK Venugopal appearing for the trustees, who both criticised Subramanium’s report.
According to the Times of India, Senior counsel Harish Salve has been the latest lawyer to have been instructed to appear for Sahara boss Subrata Roy, who continues to be locked up in Tihar Jail for contempt of court.
Salve’s first act as counsel was to accept the offer of a bigger cell for Roy - “a big conference room with attached bathroom and also an annexe in Tihar complex that is safe and secure from security point of view” – in order to arrange for the sale of big hotel properties in London and New York owned by the Sahara group to meet the Supreme Court’s stipulated now Rs 10,000 crore quasi-bail, in order to meet Sebi’s order to repay Rs 24,000 crore to investors.
Journalist @JaskiratSB tweeted: “Amongst facilities that could possibly be provided to [Roy] in jail: 2 secretarial staff, wifi, video conferencing + laptops, printers… Sahara to pay for facilities of course. As mentioned in court. But no final call yet.”
“Harish Salve completes a long list of legal luminaries representing Subrata Roy,” commented @SandipGhose on Twitter, referring to the roster of senior counsel who have appeared and failed to get Roy any relief, including Ram Jethmalani, Fali Nariman, Gopal Subramanium, KTS Tulsi, Abhishek Manu SInghvi, PH Parekh, Aryama Sundaram and others.
The Law Commission chairman Justice AP Shah has recommended that the tenure of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) should be fixed to at least two years, and that the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) should consist of at least four judges, including the CJI as chairperson, reported The Hindu and the Indian Express.
The minimum CJI tenure should take effect after the current roster of sitting Supreme Court judges in line for the CJI post will have retired by August 2022, with Justice NV Ramana as the last CJI under the old system, recommended Shah in a note he sent to the law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Furthermore, he recommended that judges should have a three year “cooling off period” after retirement before they take up any government jobs. The JAC, apart from the four sitting Supreme Court judges, should also include the law minister, with an eminent jurist and an eminent member of civil society picked by the CJI, the prime minister and the leader of the Lok Sabha opposition.
Shah’s proposal was reportedly discussed in Monday’s meeting between the law ministry and top lawyers and retired judges.
The Supreme Court has appointed senior advocate RS Cheema as the special public prosecutor (SPP) in the Coalgate scam special court trial, reported the PTI, presided over by additional sessions judge Bharat Parashar.
A week ago the bench of Chief Justice RM Lodha, Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph had heavily pushed for Gopal Subramanium, who bowed out of the apex court judgeship process, to become SPP.