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SEBI vs Sahara: The Sahara Group has been ordered by the Supreme Court to hand over title deeds of properties worth Rs.20,000 crore to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) after hearing three contempt of court petitions filed by SEBI against the group's owner Subrata Roy [ANI]
Fearless judiciary: Miffed with politician VS Achuthanandan’s remarks on the judge hearing his petition, the judge said: “"I'll teach him how the courts function. This court is functioning without any fear or submissiveness. He should use other methods to get applause." [TOI]
Court wage: Refusing to show sympathy to Class 3 and 4 staff in government pleaders’ offices the Bombay high court remarked on a petition for increase in their salary, that the condition of court staff was worse off [Asian Age]
Vadra PIL dismissed: The Supreme Court has rejected a licence allocation PIL against Gandhi-dynasty-in-law Robert Vadra and other developers as “cheap publicity” [TOI]
Magistrate arrested: The Madras HC is hearing petitions for necessary action against top police officials of Tiruppur district for arresting Thangaraj, then Judicial Magistrate of Coonoor, in total violation of the norms and guidelines framed by the Supreme Court [New Indian Express]
Madras HC revenue norms on designating senior advocates: An advocate should have at least 15 years of experience arguing cases, some of them should be landmark judgements and should have earned at least Rs 7 lakh annually from lawyering for three years immediately before being considered to be elevated [The Hindu]
Madras bar opposes JAC: The Madras Bar Association (MBA) in a memorandum to the president of India has opposed the constitutional amendment that establishes the Judicial Appointments Committee. The MBA has likened the amendment to the British Rowlatt Act 1919 – which delimited all civil liberties [TOI]
Research better, says judge: Lawyers should do better research before arguing a case in court, in order to help the judges do their job better said a Madras HC judge [The Hindu]
JR for admin tribunals? Administrative tribunals should also have the power of judicial review, like the judiciary does [Zee News]
Pizza Hut under DTAA lens: The Delhi High Court is set to rule whether a US company can simultaneously avail of the benefit of a lower tax rate under the Indo-US Double Tax Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) and exemptions on payments of royalty under the Income Tax (I-T) Act [Financial Express]
SC slams IR flip-flop litigation: Revenue shouldn't "be allowed to flip-flop on the issue and it ought to let the matter rest, rather than spend the tax payers' money in pursuing litigation of its own sake... There was no need for it to continue this litigation when it was quite clear that not only was it fruitless but also that it may not have added anything to the public coffers", says SC [Business Standard]
Jayalalithaa asks SC to extend judge tenure to hear graft case: TN CM Jayalalithaa and others faces disproportionate assets probe in Karnataka HC, write SC asking for new judge's appointments to be quashed in order for old judge's tenure to be extended to hear the case [NDTV]
Photographic defaults: Banks' practice of publicising defaulters' pictures could be on thin ice, legally, lawyers tell TOI [TOI]
CC’s presentation tips for women: UK legal giant Clifford Chance issued a memo to its women retainers with advice such as: “Don’t giggle; Don’t squirm; Don’t tilt your head; No one heard Hillary the day she showed cleavage” [Above The Law/Think Progress]
Jaising slams progress on sexual violence: ASG Indira Jaising, in a personal capacity, writes how women remain as vulnerable under the system as they were before December 2012, despite protests and promises of reform in the Delhi gang rape: “Bias is embedded in the practice and procedure of trials… The patronising attitudes of law enforcement agencies are truly dangerous… The problem is that we have fostered an environment of impunity for the act and that is why we have not succeeded in changing the attitude.” [Indian Express]
DoT to revise telecoms M&A norms, upping max merged market share to 50%: The Department of Telecommunications is considering allowing a 50 per cent market share to merged telecoms entities, instead of the earlier 35 per cent, as well as permitting retention of two blocks of 3G spectrum in its new M&A guidelines to be discussed on Tuesday [Zee News]
Orissa circuit bench hopes recede: The prospects for southern and western circuit benches of the Orissa HC have become bleak, after union law minister Kapil Sibal told the state chief minister that his recommendation means nothing in the absence of the HC’s chief justice’s consent [New Indian Express]
Maha circuit bench talks: A delegation of the Pune Bar Association (PBA) on Wednesday had its second hearing with the justices DY Chandrachud and SJ Vazifdar panel of the Bombay High Court, which is looking into the lawyers’ demands of setting up a high court bench in Pune [Express]
Andhra scam: A Rs 500 crore scam has surfaced in the Andhra Pradesh state government’s largest revenue generator – the commercial taxes department – in the form of alleged illegal refunds made to 61 firms [Deccan Chronicle]
Super-ceded forest regulator: The union government has rejected the Supreme Court’s suggestion made two years ago to set up a ‘super regulator’ for the single-window grant of environment and forest clearances for projects [TOI]
Clinical trials on ice: The Supreme Court has blocked 157 global clinical trials in India that were approved by the government, while asking the regulators re-examine whether the trials are for the benefit of people [Indian Express]
Gov mulls Sanjay Dutt leniency: The home affairs ministry has asked the Maharashtra government whether actor Sanjay Dutt and two others, who were given jail terms for involvement in the 1994 Bombay serial blasts, should be released early on “humanitarian grounds” [The Hindu]
Community radio PIL: The Supreme Court, hearing a PIL by NGO Common Cause, will examine the rules that bar private FM radio channels and community radios from broadcasting news and current affairs [DNA]
Eggplant on official's face in prelim BT Brinjal ruling: The Karnataka HC has ruled that prima facie an offence is made out against officials of the University of Agricultural Science who violated the Biodiversity Act by signing agreements with US private firm Monsanto to develop the “Bt Brinjal” using local varieties of aubergine / eggplant [The Hindu]
Asaram aide surrenders: Shilpi, the warden of Asaram's Chindwara 'ashram' in Madhya Pradesh - a key accused and associate of controversial self-styled godman Asaram Bapu - today surrendered before a Delhi district court [PTI]
AP HC 9 new judges: The SC collegium has approved the names of nine district judges who are to be elevated to the Andhra Pradesh HC, increasing its strength to 35, including the chief justice. The sanctioned strength of the AP HC is 49 [Deccan Chronicle]
Manipur HC CJ: Former Allahabad HC justice Laxmi Kanta Mohapatra was sworn in as a judge of Manipur HC yesterday. He will act as the acting chief justice until a chief justice is appointed at the HC [PTI]
Madras HC CJ: Madras HC acting chief justice RK Agarwal has been appointed as chief justice of that court. He was transferred to the Madras HC after becoming a permanent judge at the Allahabad HC this year [The Hindu]
Maha circuit benches: The joint action committee (JAC) of lawyers from six districts has been invited for a meeting with the chief justice of the Bombay high court in Mumbai at 5.30pm today to discuss the issue of new circuit benches [TOI]
Clifford Chance lies in Singapore? UK legal giant Clifford Chance is facing the Singapore law minister’s allegation that it issued misleading statements about the scope of work it could provide in Singapore – local litigation advice [Reuters]
Lily Thomas scalp: Lily Thomas claims its first scalp with convicted Congress leader Rashid Masood. Lok Sabha MPs Lalu Prasad Yadav and Jagdish Sharma are likely to follow suit [PTI]
AC for HC: The Karnataka government has finally cleared the Rs 8 crore proposal to install air conditioners and noise insulation all through the Karnataka high court [Bangalore Mirror]
NGT greening interiors: The National Green Tribunal is busy interior decorating its new permanent premises with the color green for furniture and courtrooms [PTI]
Policing the police: The Karnataka Police Complaints Authority has been created to receive complaints from victims of police brutality, for any grievances like misconduct, arrest or detention without due process of law, custodial death and abuse of power [TOI]
Unsensitised courts: The video link option for testimony, available to rape victims, is hardly implemented reports IBNLive as the Mumbai photojournalist rape-survivor collapsed in court when shown a porn clip and asked to testify if her attackers made her watch the clip
Circuit bench protests: The Kangra District Bar Association (DBA) has submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister, Chief Justice of India and the union law minister in protest against the decision of the state high court, wherein it ordered district and sessions court and additional district and sessions court judges to hold circuit courts at various subdivisions of the district for faster disposal of the cases [HT]
P&H HC judge: Punjab & Haryana HC has got a new additional judge in Navita Singh [Orissa Diary]
Happy bday NGT: To celebrate its third day of founding, the National green Tribunal (NGT) is finally getting its own Delhi office in Faridkot house, moving from is current makeshift homes. It is also getting a third bench to share the caseload of its two current benches [PTI]
SC to listen to sadhu dreams: A petition has asked the apex court to monitor the digging for 1,000 tonnes of buried gold, which a local holy man claimed he saw in a dream buried under a village [IANS]
Tribunal woes: The Sales Tax Tribunal is facing pendency of 4,000 cases at the moment because its members do not have accommodation and either don’t resume duty or leave soon after being appointed to the job [PTI]
Madras Trade Unions: The Madras HC has directed the Tamil Nadu government to amend the Trade Unions Act to prevent outsiders from being elected to the office of trade unions [PTI]
Thumbs up for Shahid movie: Rave reviews for Shahid – the biopic released today on lawyer and human rights activist Shahid Azmi’s battle with India’s justice system, where those arrested on terror charges are labelled terrorists even before facing trial [WSJ]
Retail FDI flop: With Walmart’s announced exit from India, due to excessive red-tape and the rule that 30 per cent of products must be sourced from local producers, not a single multinational is taking advantage of last year’s much debated government decision to allow 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail. Finance minister P Chidambaram hit back, calling Walmart a “speck” in the Indian market and if it was “still not satisfied, so be it”. [WSJ]
SC sees Radia criminal leads: After analysing the Radia tapes the Supreme Court told the CBI to inquire into at least six possibly criminal issues raised by the infamous leaked phone conversations between lobbyist Niira Radia and others. “Radia's conversations reveal deep-rooted malice by private enterprises in connivance with government officials for extraneous purposes,” said the court headed by Justice GS Singhvi [PTI]
Polygamous judge-to-be-no-more: “Marrying a man who already has a wife will go down as one of the 'rarest of rare' ways of losing out on the opportunity to become a judge,” writes the Bangalore Mirror in its report on 33-year-old judicial aspirant who lost out on a bench seat despite ranking 41st among 232 candidates
Goa reduces appeal rights: The Goa government has introduced The Goa High Court (Hearing of Writ Petitions by Division Bench and Abolition of Letters Patent Appeals) Bill 2013, which will ban filing appeal against the ruling of a single judge of the Bombay High Court before its division bench, in order to reduce excessive litigation and pendency [PTI]
Furlough a birth right?: How does Bollywood mega star Sanjay Dutt’s 28-day prison holiday on ‘Furlough’ compare against other prisoners’ cases? Newslaundry looks into it.
Sibal wants cyber fight: Indian telecom minister Kapil Sibal argued for Indian court jurisdiction over cyber security attacks from outside that affect India [PTI]
Court bars advocate from filing, orders psych: Delhi high court advocate Uma Shankar Pandey was barred from filing petitions in the court and was ordered to undertake psychiatric treatment, by justices Pradeep Nandrajog and V Kameswar Rao after hearing his six-hour-long arguments for three days. The right to access courts can be restricted to pursue “legitimate and proportionate aims”, observed the bench [IE]
New Madras HC judges: The president has finalised 7 new madras high court judgeships: R Mahadevan, K Kalyanasundaram, PN Prakash, S Vaidyanathan and a lawyer Pushpa Sathyanarayana and two service candidates V Ravi and G Chockalingam [Hindu]
End of Swiss bank secrecy: Switzerland, well-known for its anonymous numbered bank accounts and tight banking secrecy rules, became the world’s 58th nation on Tuesday to sign the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters – a document, which paves the way for automatic exchange of tax information, thus ending baking secrecy in Switzerland [Hindu]
Bar Assoc against Telangana: Visakhapatnam Bar Association have decided members will meet BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley and request them not to extend their support to the proposed Bill for creation of Telangana State [Hindu]
Indo-brazil internet security: Brazil and India have agreed to share information of internet security strategies to devise internet regulations in order to protect online privacy from snooping by other countries [Hindu]
NSA knows your friends: The National Security Agency has been sifting through millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging accounts around the world including those of Americans in its effort to find possible links to terrorism or other criminal activity, according to a published report [Hindu]
SC Juvenile home committee: The CJI has asked all high court CJs to appoint a judge each to inspect the functioning of state juvenile homes. At the Supreme Court level, the CJI has nominated Justice Madan Lokur as Chairperson of the Juvenile Committee for effective implementation of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act. This committee is a debut effort from the SC after a large number of complaints about maintenance at these homes [Hindu/NDTV]
Judge rejig: Manipur HC CJ AM Sapre will replace Gauhati HC CJ who will assume the post of a judge at the Orissa HC on 24 October. Gauhati HC will get Karnataka HC’s justice KS Rao and its own additional judge PK Saikia as a permanent judge; Manipur HC will get Allahabad HC justice LK Mohapatra; The tenure of 4 Delhi additional judges has been extended [PTI]
Law university stepchild: The University of Pune remains a paper proposal seven years after it first came to be, even as neighbouring Nagpur has been successful in winning the mandate to launch the country’s 15th national law university [TOI]
Rightful electricity: The Madras High Court has declared that denial of power supply to any person will be considered as a violation of fundamental human rights, on the petition of a group of washermen who were denied power supply in their residence on unauthorised land [India TV News]
More Orissa judges needed: Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik has written to law minister Sibal asking him to increase the Orissa HC’s approved judge strength from 22 judges to 27 [Odisha Today]
Nagpur wins NLS Maharashtra clearance: The proposal for “Maharashtra National Law University” (as it will be called) to be based in Nagpur was cleared yesterday by the Maharasthra state cabinet. The government has earmarked a reduced capital grant of Rs 125 crore (from Rs 204 crore) for the NLS, which will take in 100 students for its first batch through the CLAT [TOI]
Justice Singhvi excuses self from 2G case, pre-retirement: Justice GS Singhvi, who was leading the bench in the 2G spectrum case, will not hear the case anymore because he has a lot of workload to finish before his retirement on 11 December [TOI]
World anti death penalty day: To mark today's World Day Against Death Penalty NGO Amnesty International yesterday urged India to commute all its death sentences and impose a moratorium on executions [Firstpost]
ML Sharma again Delhi rape lawyer: Serial PIL filer and the former lawyer of one of the Delhi rape convicts, ML Sharma – who had been dumped as counsel to Delhi gang rape convict Mukesh after failing to appear in a fast track court hearing for him – has again filed a Vakalatnama to represent Mukesh after his defence lawyer VK Anand yesterday withdrew from the case [BS/TOI]
Karnataka circuit fiasco: The principle bench at Karnataka HC suffers undue vacancies as judges get deputed to its recently consolidated circuit benches at Gulbarg and Dharwad [Deccan Chronicle]
Delhi rape lawyer withdraws: Delhi rape convicts’ defence lawyer VK Anand withdrew from his role as counsel citing interference by the clients and their families ahead of Delhi HC’s decision on confirmation of the district court’s death sentence [DNA India]
Madras bar election litter: Ahead of the Madras HC Advocates’ Association elections in which 95 candidates are contesting and 7,300 advocates are voting, the Madras HC is littered with pamphlets and stickers relating to the election campaign – though one candidate vows to plant more trees if he wins [The Hindu]
Pune circuit bench demand: The Pune bar association will give a presentation on their long-pending demand for a circuit bench in the city to a two-judge panel of the Bombay high court on October 17 [TOI]P
UID unimportant: The Supreme Court has stuck to its stand that the Unique Identification Number is not mandatory for availing certain essential services [NDTV]
Sex harassment RTI exemption to babus: The Ministry of Personnel has declined an RTI request for details of sexual harassment cases against IAS officers, citing exemption based on a Supreme Court judgement [PTI]
2013 acad session in 2014? Admission to LL.B. courses is yet to begin in government law colleges and those private colleges that have entered into a seat-sharing agreement with the Tamil Nadu government, because disagreements over fee structure still exist [Hindu]
Karnataka govt pleader overhaul: The Karnataka government is on a warpath with its state legal team after it prepared a list of replacements for 61 out of its 73 law officers. While 36 officers resigned without putting up a fight, the rest of them is daring the state government to dismiss them [Bangalore Mirror]
India net freedoms decline most: India was the country with the greatest drop in a ‘freedom on the net’ index compiled by NGO Freedom House, though India is still ranked as “partly free” [The Register / Report via Freedom House]
Juvenile justice: Asserting that it is nearly impossible to reform juvenile repeat offenders since they know their way around legal provisions, juvenile home chief demands treating repeat offenders as adults [TOI]
Judges’ retirement age writ dismissed: The Madras high court has ruled out the possibility of a mandamus directing the government to amend the law to increase the retirement age of higher judiciary judges to 68. It dismissed the PIL seeking the writ [New Indian Express]
Lawyer protest: Kallakurichi lawyers in Tamil Nadu are going on a protest against the stalled completion of a court building in their district [New Indian Express]
Lawyers stage walk-out: The Madras Bar Association threatened to walk out of a Judicial Appointments Bill discussion with the parliamentary standing committee ‘on the advice of a member’ of the committee, after the bar association protested that it was called for the discussion on only a day’s notice [TOI]
Ex-NLUO VC arbitrary at Pondi: Former NLUO Cuttack VC Chandra Krishnamoorthy - who left the law school months after her appointment to assume VC-ship at Pondicherry University – stands to lose her position. Her appointment has been challenged in the Madras HC for being arbitrary and without due process [New Indian Express]
DHC on Android: The Delhi high court website now has an android app with the case display board, causelist and final orders available on it. To install it on your Android device go to Settings –> Security, and check ‘Unknown Sources’. Then click this link from your phone [App Link]
Jaitley vs Neta ordinance: BJP leader and former law minister Arun Jaitley gives a detailed statement explaining his party’s opposition to the UPA’s ordinance against the Lily Thomas law that would disqualify convicted MPs from contesting polls [Firstpost]
Undertrial terrorism: Karnataka plans to appoint a retired judge of its high court to look into cases of undertrial Muslim youth prisoners jailed on charges of terrorism. 226 suspects have been booked for terror charges in the state since 2000 [Hindu]
Benegal’s Samvidhaan: Veteran Hindi cinema and television director Shyam Benegal is currently working on a ten part TV series on the Indian constitution, called Samvidhaan [NDTV]
Derogatory advocate fined: Madras HC fined him Rs 10,000 and dismissed his petition seeking restriction on relatives of politicians from contesting polls, because, according to the court, he had used derogatory language in his petition against a sitting member of parliament [PTI]
Lalu jailed: Former Bihar chief minister and RJD chief Lalu Yadav, who was convicted by a CBI court, was today sentenced to five years in jail and a fine of Rs 25 lakh in the Rs 950 crore fodder scam [TOI]
Maha lawyers’ chambers delayed: The high court bar association of the Bombay bench at Aurangabad yesterday protested an administrative delay in handing over an allotted land for construction of 1,200 lawyers’ chambers in Marathwada [TOI]
North face: North Orissa lawyers are unhappy over the state chief minister’s recommendation to the law ministry to have high court benches in southern and eastern Orissa [New Indian Express]
RK Aggarwal Mad HC: Madras high court acting chief justice of more than seven months RK Aggarwal is now its chief justice [Oman Tribune]
Justice on wheels: WSJ does an account of Pakistan's mobile courts - $90,000 buses with courts set up inside them, which travel to remote areas to resolve disputes
IT freezes Nokia: Indian taxmen freeze Finnish mobile giant Nokia's Indian bank accounts, days ahead of its $7.2bn sale deal with Microsoft, to ensure discharge of its tax liability in India [NY Times]
Death sentence delayed: The Delhi high court has deferred hearing the confirmation reference of the death penalty to the Delhi 16 December gang rape convicts [PTI]
MP disqualified: The Supreme Court has sent Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Rasheed Masood to jail for four years, for corruption. Masood has also lost his Rajya Sabha membership due to this conviction [Daily Bhaskar]
Associate Prof boom to avoid BCI sanction: Recently facing a BCI ban, the Rajasthan Unioversity has nown put an end to its faculty crunch after the recruitment of 24 assistant professors for the university law college [TOI]
Judge’s litigation debut: 88-year-old ex-judge-turned-litigant KS Puttaswamy, who obtained the SC's restraining order recently against the linking of state benefits to the UID scheme, chats to the Hindu on why for the first time in his 50-year legal career he felt the need to petition a court [Hindu]
Indian-American judge: Indian-born Sri Srinivasan has now been sworn in as a judge of the second most powerful US court - The US Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia circuit [PTI]
GLC Karnataka: Karnataka’s fifth Government Law College has been inaugurated in North Karnataka at Martur village. The other four are in South Karnataka [Deccan Chronicle]
Poor NGT: The southern bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) which has jurisdiction over four states and a union territory, lacks the resources to provide legal aid to litigants. A large chunk of the applications before the NGT are from the poor, sources tell the New Indian Express
Child marriage circular: The Kerala government has clarified that its 27 June 2013 circular directing local bodies to register all child marriages that were solemnised before 13 June 2013, was not a license for child marriage but a way to ensure that those married before that date are not deprived of marital benefits. Child marriages are still punishable in the state under the Child Marriage Prohibition Act 2006 [Hindu]
SC 110201: The Supreme Court gets a new dedicated pin code enabling faster mail service, as the postal department’s celebration of 41 years of introducing the pin code system for its bulk mail recipients [PTI]
8 new Madras judges: Justice T Mathivanan, Justice Ardhanariswamy Arumughaswamy, Justice KBK Vasuki, Justice Kandasami Ravichandra Baabu, Justice P Devadass and Justice R Karuppiah, who are Additional Judges of the Madras High Court, have been appointed as Judges in the same High Court [Zee News]
Dodgy judicial exams: A Kerala high court judiciary aspirant has challenged its judicial recruitment process on the basis of haphazardness in the manner of notifying vacancies, conducting the interview and other things which point to a lack of transparency [Hindu]
SC can’t extend judgeship: The Supreme Court cannot extend the tenure of a retiring judge under its article 142 powers, because the retirement age of judges is fixed by statutes, argued Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati [Hindu]