Bar, Bench & Litigation
Record low pass rate: Only 12 per cent clear this year’s ‘lengthy’ SC AOR exam (but more women this year)

Another samaritan to save us all, gets magistrate FIR vs AIB & celebs for 'pornographic, obscene, vulgar show'
A Mumbai magistrates court Thursday ordered police to investigate and register an FIR against 14 celebrities involved in the controversial “AIB Roast” show performed in a stadium here on 20 January, a lawyer said. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate CS Baviskar of the fourth Girgaum Court direc...
Kapil Sibal wins nick-of-time SC stay for Teesta Setalvad, as Guj Police reach Godhra activist's house for arrest
A team of Gujarat Police and Mumbai police Thursday reached the home of social activist Teesta Setalvad after a Gujarat court declined her plea for anticipatory bail in a case relating to alleged embezzlement but the apex court restrained her arrest. Setalvad, 53 and her husband Javed Anand, both fo...
Delhi HC suo motu issues notice to gov't over condition of undertrials
The Delhi high court yesterday issued notice to the central and Delhi governments on the deplorable conditions of undertrial prisoners, including women and the mentally challenged, in jails here. A division bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice RS Endlaw asked for responses to filed by March 5...
S Ganesh plays victim card to SC for Sahara over dead Mirach loan; Subrata remains jailed
The Sahara Group Wednesday told the Supreme Court that its deal with the Mirach Capital Group to raise a $650-million loan to comply with the court’s order to deposit Rs.5,000 crore in cash and bank guarantee of like amount has collapsed. The apex court Jan 9 had permitted Sahara group to raise a “j...
SC to examine CCI jurisdiction on DLF flat owners' plea
The Supreme Court yesterday said it will examine whether the Competition Commission of India (CCI) had the jurisdiction to entertain the plea by flat owners in three DLF residential complexes in Gurgaon who alleged that the real estate giant was exploiting its dominant position on conditions for pro...
Kejriwal talks Delhi statehood with home minister Rajnath Singh
A day after the AAP registered a historic victory in the Delhi assembly polls, chief minister-designate Arvind Kejriwal yesterday sought the centre’s cooperation to ensure full statehood for the national capital. Kejriwal, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) convenor, meanwhile, declined to take the Z secur...
Lawyer's defamation case v Kejriwal & others pushed to March, as AAP a bit busy right now...
A Delhi court today granted AAP leader and Delhi Chief Minister-designate Arvind Kejriwal exemption from personal appearance in a defamation complaint filed by an advocate. Metropolitan Magistrate Muneesh Garg allowed Kejriwal, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders Manish Sisodia and Yogendra Yadav’s applic...
Case of the week: Court to decide whether it can summon President Obama to Allahabad for criminal defamation [UPDATE: Case dismissed]
Advocate Sushil Kumar Mishra has filed a criminal defamation complaint before an Allahabad magistrate against US president Barack Obama, who allegedly “tarnished the image of India which is a secular country”, after POTUS warned in a speech on his India visit that religious tolerance was on the rise...
Mirach group asks SC to let it just buy Sahara hotels already, cancels loan, returns DD fees
US-based Mirach Capital Group claims to have returned $2.625m in due diligence fees to Sahara Group but asked the Supreme Court to intervene and allow a sale of three of Sahara’s hotels to “ready, willing, and able investors.” The syndicate of five UK and US investors, which had last month made a $2...
AAP wins Delhi: Somnath Bharti to start court video recording in 20 days; AAP to ‘go through all cases’ in 6 months with double-court shifts

Read an offended law teacher’s PIL and what she (and apparently Christians and others) found offensive in the AIB roast; But, are the jokes illegal?

SC lacks capacity to deliver proper jurisprudence: Only 7% of apex judgments really had anything to do with the constitution in 2014, reveals research

Delhi HC awards 30 years jail to Katara murderers; Police, victim's family wanted death
The Delhi High Court today sentenced Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav to 30 years in prison for the murder of Nitish Katara, a friend of Vikas Yadav’s sister. But a special bench of Justice Gita Mittal and Justice JR. Midha rejected police and Nitish Katara’s mother Neelam Katara’s plea to aw...
Gov't tells HC it was totally cool to de-plane Greenpeace activist because 'anti-national activities'
The central government told the Delhi high court Friday that Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai has been “involved in anti-national activities” and that was why she was offloaded Jan 11 at the airport here. Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain told the court that Pillai was offloaded on the basis ...
SC collegium meets again, undaunted by law minister's threat to spike collegium appointments
Chief Justice of India (CJI) HL Dattu and the apex court’s most senior judges have decided to continue holding collegium meetings to recommend new judges, reported the Indian Express , despite law minister DV Sadananda Gowda late last month warning that there would be no new judges until the Nationa...
Madras HC judge goes on slight tangent, bans all university beauty pageants
Madras high court judge Justice TS Sivagnanam, hearing a petition by a mother that her daughter was not paid her prize for winning a beauty contest at an engineering college, decided to issue notice to the local government in his interim order to ban such events at universities. “It is not known as ...
Subrata Sahara's $1.6bn bail collection efforts now probably in the soup, as backed by forged BoA guarantee
Sahara’s deal with Mirach Capital Group to borrow $2bn to bail out the group’s supremo Subrata Roy - jailed by the Supreme Court for contempt of court since nearly a year - might be falling apart after a Reuters exclusive yesterday revealed that a Bank of America guarantee letter backing the loan ha...
SC upholds statute: Undisclosed convictions of some offences are grounds for new election
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that suppression or non-disclosure of information about serious crimes by a candidate at the time of filing nomination interferes with the voters’ right to make an informed choice and the election of such a candidate is liable to be set aside. [ Download judgment: K...
Kapil Sibal fails to convince SC to babysit CBI's Saradha scam probe
The Supreme Court Thursday turned down the West Bengal government and the ruling Trinamool Congress’s plea for the court monitoring of the CBI probe into Saradha and non-Saradha chit fund scam cases. Noting that there was no allegation by the applicants (West Bengal and Trinamool) that the Central B...