In a significant judgment delivered yesterday, the Bombay High Court rejected the National Stock Exchange’s application for injunction, in a defamation action, against the journalist Sucheta Dalal (and others), for articles published on the financial news website, moneylife.in. Justice Gautam Patel ...
Blogs by Gautam Bhatia
September 9, 2015 · 7:08 pm Previously on this blog, we have discussed the Rajasthan legislature’s imposition of educational qualifications as a pre-requisite to contest local body elections, via an Ordinance, strategically passed last December, just before local body polls. The Supreme Court and Ra...
(This is a guest post by Ayushi Singhal) Under the present legal system of India, people from different religions are governed by their own personal laws in matters of inheritance, marriage, separation, guardianship etc. In this regard, the succession in Hindus is governed by the Hindu Succession Ac...
Initial Drafts The initial drafts of the equality and non-discrimination provisions were prepared by B.R.Ambedkar (B Shiva Rao Ed. “The framing of India’s Constitution- Select Documents’ Universal law publishing co. Pvt. Ltd Vol II (2004) PP 86-88) and K.M.Munshi (Vol II PP 74-75). Ambedkar’s draft ...
(Dovetailing with the previous discussion of sex discrimination on this blog, the following three-part guest post series by Professor Sanjay Jain focusses on the discussions surrounding women and the Constitution, during the Constituent Assembly Debates) — Representation of women in Constituent Asse...
The set of cases that we have discussed in this series is not comprehensive. To the best of my knowledge, though, it is largely representative of the major lines of argument followed by the High Courts and the Supreme Court in their analysis of Articles 15(1) and 15(3). Readers interested in other a...
Before ending our discussion on sex discrimination under the Constitution, it would be interesting to take note of two (overruled) High Court cases that pushed interpretive boundaries in their understanding of Article 15(1). The first is the Delhi High Court’s judgment in Naz Foundation vs NCT of De...
We have seen that in Anuj Garg, the Supreme Court adopted the anti-stereotyping principle: sex-based classifications could not be saved under Article 15(1) if their only justification was to invoke stereotypes about women’s sexual or social roles in the community. What, however, is the basis of this...
In the last three essays, we discussed the complex intersections between labour and service laws, and sex discrimination. Let us now return to our original line of cases, which present discrimination claims in a simpler and starker background. In A.M. Shaila vs Chairman, Cochin Port Trust , decided ...
(In this guest post, Vansh Gupta explores a recent ruling of the US Equal Opportunity Commission that speaks directly to the Indian debate over the constitutionality of s. 377) The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently issued a ruling (available here ) recognising discrimination on t...
In a piece called Death and the Sovereign (the reference is unmistakable), Pratap Bhanu Mehta has an important critique of the Rajasthan High Court’s Santhara judgment. He argues that legal categories (such as “suicide” and “attempted suicide”) are insufficient and inaccurate placeholders for unders...
This week, the Rajasthan High Court held that the Jain practice of santhara – a ritual of “ voluntary and systematic fasting to death ” was illegal, since it amounted to abetment to suicide (criminalised under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code). There are many issues that arise out of this judgme...
After two decades of litigation, Air Hostesses, Air Flight Pursers and the Union of India met again, in one final battle before the Courts. After the decision of the Supreme Court in Yeshaswinee Merchant, refusing the merger of cadres, the struggle for equalisation was taken (again) outside the judi...
Air India vs Nargesh Mirza was only the first salvo in a legal battle that was to last thirty more years. After losing in the Supreme Court, the air hostesses took their battle to the political arena: in 1989, they petitioned the Lok Sabha against the discrimination in retirement ages and other serv...
In the previous essay, we noted the analytical problems with the Supreme Court’s judgment in Air India vs Nargesh Mirza. However, six years later, in 1987, the Supreme Court handed down another judgment that substantially undercut the ratio in Nargesh Mirza. In MacKinnon Mackenzie vs Audrey d’Costa ...
With the exception of its 1954 judgment, Yusuf Abdul Aziz, which cursorily upheld the constitutionality of adultery, the Supreme Court did not have occasion to seriously deal with sex discrimination under Article 15(1) in the first three decades after the Constitution. The cases that we have discuss...
Today, in a detailed order in the ongoing Aadhar litigation, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court referred the question of whether there exists a fundamental right to privacy under the Constitution, to a five-judge bench. In its order, the Court explains that the Attorney-General referred to the...
The decisions of the Kerala High Court in Vijayamma (1978) and A.N. Rajamma (1983), sandwich the Supreme Court’s landmark holding in Air India vs Nargesh Mirza (1981). Nonetheless, in this essay, I will break chronology and discuss the two decisions together, and then turn to Nargesh Mirza. This is ...
The cases that we have discussed so far have followed a common argumentative pattern. It will be helpful to provide a step-by-step conceptual schema: (1) All these cases are cases of direct discrimination. This means that the distribution of benefits and burdens directly tracks the line that divides...
On April 12, 1949, the Governor of East Punjab passed an order directing that in the Jails Deparment, women would be ineligible for appointment to all posts in Men’s jails, apart from that of clerk or matron. In 1972, this order was challenged before the Punjab & Haryana High Court by a women w...