Bar, Bench & Litigation

India’s Supreme Court has stayed the Madras High Court’s order to shut a Sterlite Industries copper smelting plant that the lower court had decided was polluting and in ‘pathetic condition’, as reported two days ago on Wednesday. The apex court judges decided to stay the Madras HC order until 18 October, reported Reuters. The shares in Sterlite rose 6 per cent in Mumbai trading.

Click through to read the download the full 285-page judgment, as Sunni board, Soli Sorabjee and others suspect case will go to the Supreme Court...

Sterlite Industries has to shut down its copper smelting plant in Tuticorin, due to the “negative impact of running of the industry at the place and in the manner it is being run” said a Madras High Court division bench.

The Supreme Court of India has rejected the plea to defer the Ayodhya ruling by the Allahabad High Court, which is now expected to be handed down at 3pm on Thursday 30 September, which has again put states on high alert fearing potential violence.

The Supreme Court declined to stay the Bombay High Court judgment against Vodafone of 8 September, giving the Indian tax department four weeks to decide how much Vodafone will have to pay in taxes on its purchase of Hutchison Whampoa’s Indian telecoms subsidiary, reported Bloomberg today. Vodafone may have to pay part of the amount the tax authorities decide on as the next apex court hearing has been fixed for 25 October. The total tax liability could be $2.6bn in a case that could cast doubt also on cross-border takeover tax structures.

Rakesh Tiku has been elected chairman of the Delhi bar council, winning all 14 votes cast today against opponent Rakesh Goswami in a fresh election held today after the post was left vacant for over two months following the demise of former chairman K K Sareen.

Tomorrow’s judgment in the Ayodhya religious dispute has been postponed by one week to 28 September by the Supreme Court, reported news organisations. The retired bureaucrat Ramesh Chandra Tripathi filed a petition with the Supreme Court to make the dispute subject to mediation, which was yesterday reportedly rejected. However, the apex court has now decided to hear a plea for deferring the judgment next Tuesday under section 89 of the Civil Procedure Code, according to the Indian Express.

The Supreme Court has refused to hear the petition seeking to defer the Ayodhya dispute verdict and to mediate it, with the court saying it should be taken up by another “appropriate” bench, reports OneIndia. The petitioner Ramesh Chand Tripathi claimed that the verdict would disturb communal harmony and lead to violence, reported NDTV, but this was earlier also rejected by the Allahabad High Court and he was hit with costs of Rs 50,000.

This Friday’s expected judgment in the case relating to the demolition of a mosque on the Babri site in 1992 by Hindu activists is widely feared to cause frictions. Today the Karnataka state government has declared a two-day school and college holiday from the day of the verdict (24 and 25 September) as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order after the ruling, reported the wire United News of India.

The Hindu has prepared a detailed and fascinating analysis of the case’s legal history.

Following his failure in the Bombay High Court to prevent the disciplinary committee from judging him, claiming it was biased, former Indian Premier League (IPL) chairman Lalit Modi has now approached the Supreme Court. Modi is now seeking for the apex court to hold that he can not expect fair findings from the BCCI’s disciplinary committee, which consists of interim IPL chairman Chirayu Amin, Arun Jaitley and Jyotiraditya Scindia, reported the Economic Times. The Bombay High Court had earlier refused to grant Modi an injunction because it said it could not hold that the committee was biased before the committee had even made a decision.

The strike of Rajasthan lawyers would end after judges in Rajasthan High Court said at midnight yesterday that the contentious judicial service exam would be scrapped, reported CNN-IBN this morning, citing the principal private secretary to the Chief Justice who said he had received notice in writing from the advocates that they would resume work tomorrow.

The judges’ last-minute decision would be a U-turn as only yesterday the High Court had issued notices on a petition to declare the strike illegal as the striking advocates themselves had threatened embarking on a mahapadaav (mass siege) of the Jaipur and Jodhpur high court benches from tomorrow (23 September), according to the Times of India.

The lawyers had been striking for almost a month now, having protested the exam for the post of additional district judge.

Advocate Prashanth Bhushan who is currently facing contempt proceedings for having called eight out of the previous 17 Chief Justices of India (CJIs) corrupt, has submitted a second affidavit to the Supreme Court giving evidence of six former CJIs’ alleged corruption.

Former law minister Shanti Bhushan said that at least eight of the last 16 Chief Justices of India (CJI) were “definitely corrupt” in his defiant defence in the contempt proceedings brought against his son Prashanth Bhushan who had given an interview to national magazine Tehelka on September 5 2009 making the same allegation.

The Bombay High Court has cleared the way to set up 124 morning courts in Maharashtra by next week, with 20 being based in Mumbai. The courts will operate between 8am and 10am to increase the caseload the courts are able to handle, reported the Times of India. Maharashtra received Rs 542 crore ($117m) of a Rs 5,000 crore budget to modernise the courts, of which Rs 297 crore will go towards establishment of out-of-hour courts in the next five years, according to the paper.

Less than a month ago the Maharashtra and Goa Bar Council resolved to oppose to establishment of evening courts, which would unduly burden advocates.

Vodafone has filed its appeal to the Supreme Court challenging last week’s Bombay High Court order that said the Indian tax authorities could charge Indian tax on its $11bn acquisition of Hutchison Essar in 2007.

Vodafone released a statement today saying that the company remained “convinced that there is no tax to pay on the Hutchison transaction” and would “continue to defend this position vigorously”, according to the Times of India.

The Bombay High Court had left open the option of an appeal, which was to be made within 12 weeks. The court also ruled that the tax authorities would not be able to make a final decision in the matter until eight weeks from the date of judgment last week (8 September).

The Uttar Pradesh High Court is due to rule on 24 September on who owns the Babri site where a mosque was destroyed in 1992 by Hindu activists claiming the site was the birthplace of Hindu god Ram, which sparked sectarian violence causing 2,000 deaths, reported the AFP. As both sides expect a favourable judgment, there are fears that violence could again erupt.

Full AFP article, hosted by Google.

The Supreme Court has issued notices to the government’s department of telecommunication, telecom minister A Raja and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to reply to charges that Raja caused the government losses of Rs 60,000 crore ($12.9bn) by mishandling the 2G spectrum allocation to mobile operators, according to a number of media reports. The 2G mobile telecoms licenses were allegedly awarded to favoured parties without competitive bidding at below-market prices in 2007.

This follows a public interest litigation (PIL) alleging that the CBI has been deliberately slowing down the investigation into the case out of political motivation.

Read the full Timesnow report.