Supreme Court
Arguments in The Kerala Bar Hotels Association vs State of Kerala began with a lot of excitement on both sides last week before the bench of justices Viramajit Sen and Shiva Kirti Singh.
Parliament faced record-low levels of productivity this session, with mainly the Delhi pecuniary jurisdiction bill and cheque bouncing bill squeezing through.
As the oral submissions in the Union of India vs V Sriharan @ Murugan matter concluded on Wednesday (August 12) in the Supreme Court, it became obvious that the Rajasthan government chose to adopt the submissions of other State Governments who have, by and large, opposed the Union of India’s plea for restricting the state governments’ power under the Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.PC ) to remit life sentences.
On yesterday’s penultimate day of hearing of Union of India vs V Sriharan @ Murugan, the battle lines were clearly drawn between the Central Government and the State Governments, most of whom are listed as respondents in this case.
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.
The Indian Express and others reported:
A bench of the Gujarat High Court, led by outgoing acting Chief Justice VM Sahai, today issued notices to 27 judges (both sitting and retired) of the court; the state Revenue Department; and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation among other government agencies, seeking their replies on the 2008 allotment of residential plots to sitting and retired judges.
The judges, to whom notices have been sent, include eight sitting Gujarat High Court judges, Chief Justices of Bombay and Orissa High Courts and a sitting judge of Supreme Court.
More detail at The Indian Express.
The Financial Express and others reported:
The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the Bombay high court’s judgment that upheld the levy of service tax on services provided by lawyers and law firms to business clients with turnover of Rs 10 lakh and more.
A bench headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu while issuing notice to the ministry of finance, the Director General of Service Tax, Central Board of Excise and Customs, and others stayed the HC judgment on the petition filed by the Bombay Bar Association challenging the levy of service tax on lawyers, which was imposed with effect from May 1, 2011, and was changed to reverse charge (obligation was shifted to business entities from July 1, 2012). The issue pertains to the 14-month period between May 1, 2011, and July 1, 2012.
Service tax has been a long-running dispute between lawyers and the tax man after the 2011 budget hit advocates with service tax.
The fake encounter case involving the use of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) against innocent victims - being heard by the Supreme Court suo motu - came up before justices Madan B Lokur and UU Lalit.
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.
DK Aruna vs Union of India (WP (c) 512/2015) was dismissed by a three-Judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI), HL Dattu on Friday, 7 August, after spirited arguments in the court for 15 minutes.
The government today told the Supreme Court that it wanted to ban child pornography websites, but expressed its inability to go beyond that and don the role of moral police.
Addressing the apex court bench headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told the court that the state cannot be present in every household to check what people were watching in private and interfere with their entertainment.
Telling the court that there has to be some self regulation to check the viewing of porn websites, the AG told the court that the state could not be totalitarian.
The AG said this to the court in the course of the hearing of a petition seeking a total clampdown on websites showing pornography.
For full account of today's hearing, check CCG Delhi's report
In Maru Ram vs Union of India in 1980, the Supreme Court’s five-Judge Constitution Bench heard the first challenge to section 433A Cr.P.C. and upheld its constitutionality.
Now, the issue has turned full circle.
The hearing of this case continued yesterday with Rakesh Dwivedi, counsel for both Tamil Nadu and West Bengal in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, arguing the whole day that state governments should have the power to suspend or remit sentences or exercise mercy by using their own discretion.