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...

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...

(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...

Initial DraftsThe 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...

(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 AssemblyRepresentation of women...

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...

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...

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,...

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....

(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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...