Bar, Bench & Litigation

6 October is likely to be the climax in the ongoing Cauvery hearing in the Supreme Court, if one were to interpret today’s outcome in Court No 4 in the afternoon.

A Supreme Court bench of justices JS Khehar and Dipak Misra today disposed of three writ petitions challenging President’s rule in Arunachal Pradesh, which was imposed on 26 January, as infructuous.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested senior Tis Hazari judge Rachna Tiwari Lakha while accepting a Rs 4 lakh bribe from an advocate in a case she was hearing, according to CBI sources as reported by PTI.

So, how did today’s much expected hearing on the Cauvery case go in the Supreme Court?

The posts of chairman, secretary and Bar Council of India (BCI) member at the Punjab and Haryana bar council (PHBC) remain ambiguously occupied after turf wars resulted in a police complaint, an allegedly forged resignation letter, rebukes and intervention by the BCI, an allegedly improper election and allegations of goons attacking the state bar council office.

At an NUJS Kolkata executive committee meeting today (24 September), the term of vice chancellor (VC) Ishwara Bhat was extended for five years, according to several authoritative sources.

Gujarat high court advocates Tirth Bhatt, Nimit Shukla and Sairica Raju acting for four gamers and gaming enthusiasts have asked to intervene in the public interest litigation against augmented virtual reality game Pokemon Go, which is being heard in the Gujarat high court. Bhatt and Shukla are GNLU Gandhinagar alumni.

The Huffington Post India has published intellectual property lawyer Shwetasree Majumder’s account of incidents of sexual harassment and assault when she was aged 11 by a stranger on a bus, two years later by a family acquaintance’s brother, by two professors at university, and later, when she became a lawyer, by a client and by a colleague.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) delayed a lawyer’s practice certificate by four years, and has now been ordered by the Madras high court to make it available to the lawyer as soon as possible, as first reported by Live Law.

After three hours of an intense hearing from 2pm today, the Supreme Court bench of justices Dipak Misra and UU Lalit, in an interim order, directed Karnataka to release 6,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu until 27 September.

The Hindu newspaper yesterday successfully persuaded the Supreme Court bench comprising of justices JS Khehar and Arun Mishra to change its mind in an ongoing litigation over a breach of privilege notice issued to its editor, Mukund Padmanabhan, by the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

The Nalsar Hyderabad Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) and its Cases Against Sexual Harassment (CASH) volunteer group has come out in support of the anonymous student of the law school who, through an open letter on social media, alleged campus sexual assault by another unnamed Nalsar student.

Supreme Court advocate Vijay Anand’s son V Vikas allegedly killed an autorickshaw driver and injured 10 others in Chennai when his Porsche car rammed into 12 parked autorickshaws while drunk driving, reported several media.

The Nalsar Hyderabad student bar council (SBC) has issued an official statement on the alleged campus sexual harassment and assault that was first revealed in an anonymous open letter published on the Facebook page of The Nalsar Community. The post has since gone viral and been picked up by some non-legal media.

Advocate Swathi Sukumar acting for Shamnad Basheer and other legal and social academics, won for a Delhi University photocopying shop in the Delhi high court, which dismissed the copyright suit of three international publishers against it, reported various media.

A strike by lawyers protesting the shifting of Patiala House Court to Rouse Avenue paralysed the judicial work in all district courts of Delhi on Friday - a move North of around 2.4km or 11 minutes by car, according to Google Maps.