Author: Anvita Dwivedi

The Punjab Government has approached the Supreme Court challenging the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s order directing the Central Bureau of Investigation to register a criminal case and investigate allegations of corruption allegedly linked to persons associated with Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s office. The State’s challenge, filed through a Special Leave Petition, places before the Supreme Court a question that extends well beyond the political controversy surrounding the allegations: when can a constitutional court displace the State’s own investigative machinery and entrust a case to the CBI, particularly where the material originated from the Enforcement Directorate and was forwarded…

Chief Justice of India Surya Kant has called for a closer relationship between judicial decision-making and legal scholarship, observing that courts ordinarily encounter individual disputes while academia is better positioned to identify the larger patterns emerging across cases. Speaking at the second Prof. (Dr.) N.R. Madhava Menon Memorial Lecture in New Delhi, the CJI said that while the courtroom sees the individual case, academic scholarship can examine what happens to similarly situated people beyond the boundaries of individual litigation. His central proposition was that justice cannot become truly wise merely by being legally correct; it must also remain connected to…

The Supreme Court on October 6 closed a long-pending seven-judge Constitution Bench reference concerning the relationship between legislative privilege and the fundamental right to freedom of speech, after it was brought to the Court’s notice that the very resolution of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly which had triggered the proceedings was withdrawn in 2004. The Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, comprising Justices Aravind Kumar, P.K. Mishra, Joymalya Bagchi, Vipul Pancholi, Sree Chandrashekhar and V. Mohana, declined to undertake what it regarded as an essentially academic exercise in the absence of a surviving dispute. At the same…

The Bombay High Court has granted significant ad-interim protection to actor Samantha Ruth Prabhu against the unauthorised use of her name, image, voice, likeness and other identifiable attributes of her personality, particularly in AI-generated deepfakes, morphed photographs, obscene videos, synthetic audio, impersonating chatbots and unauthorised commercial material. Justice Madhav J. Jamdar, while considering Samantha Ruth Prabhu’s commercial intellectual property suit, found a very strong prima facie case that the impugned digital material violated her personality, publicity, privacy and moral rights, and directed Google, Meta and other platforms and unidentified infringers to remove or disable access to the offending material. The…

The Supreme Court has clarified an important boundary between the supervisory jurisdiction of courts and the interim powers of an arbitral tribunal under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, holding that an arbitral tribunal exercising jurisdiction under Section 17 cannot assume appellate jurisdiction over an order passed by a court under Section 9. A Bench comprising Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Prasanna B. Varale set aside a direction of the Bombay High Court which had remitted a pending statutory appeal under Section 37 to the subsequently constituted arbitral tribunal and directed the tribunal to treat those proceedings as an application…

The Supreme Court on October 5 came down heavily on actor Rajpal Yadav for repeatedly failing to comply with directions to deposit money in connection with seven cheque dishonour cases, observing that the Court was inclined to dismiss his challenge to the conviction but was giving him another opportunity in an effort to secure payment for the complainant. A Bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana expressed strong displeasure at Yadav’s conduct and questioned why he had neither complied with the Court’s earlier direction nor sought an extension of time. The Court…

The Supreme Court has reserved its judgment on a significant question at the intersection of personal liberty, constitutional safeguards governing arrest and the exceptionally stringent bail regime under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. A Bench comprising Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice R. Mahadevan is considering whether an accused facing a commercial-quantity NDPS prosecution can be released from custody when the arresting agency failed to meaningfully communicate the grounds of arrest, even though the accused has not independently satisfied the twin conditions imposed by Section 37 of the NDPS Act. The issue arises from an appeal by the…

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to list a plea seeking directions to the Delhi Police to permit peaceful demonstrations at Jantar Mantar, at a time when protests are taking place in the national capital demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The matter was mentioned before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, where the Court indicated that it would first examine the nature of the petition, the identity of the petitioner and whether any similar proceedings were already pending before the Court before deciding the manner in which the matter should proceed. The…

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to register a criminal case and investigate allegations of corruption allegedly connected with the functioning of the Punjab Chief Minister’s Office, bringing a politically sensitive controversy within the framework of an independent criminal investigation. The Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor also directed the State of Punjab and the Punjab Police to extend all assistance to the CBI and called for a report on the progress of the investigation within two months. The order came in a Public Interest Litigation…

The Supreme Court has declined to interfere, at the present stage, with a Calcutta High Court decision allowing a Public Interest Litigation challenging alleged violations of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 in the process of obtaining approvals for the ambitious Great Nicobar Island development project. A Bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana, while hearing the Union Government’s challenge to the maintainability of the PIL, considered the fact that the substantive proceedings were already pending before the High Court and were scheduled for hearing on November 25 and 26. Rather than entering into the…