Indian Judiciary

A five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court of India is presently hearing a set of cases popularly known as the “Maharashtra political controversy cases”. While questions have been raised about whether the situation is now fait accompli, and whether the Court can “turn the clock back” if it wanted to, the …

Noting the trauma and pain that a child has to undergo when his paternity is questioned in court by his own father, the Supreme Court has held that children also have right to privacy and not to have their legitimacy questioned frivolously in court which must refrain from directing DNA …

The Supreme Court has held in a judgment that children cannot be mechanically subjected to DNA tests in each and every case between warring parents as a short-cut to establish proof of infidelity. “Genetic information is personal and intimate,” a Bench of Justices V. Ramasubramanian and B.V. Nagarathna observed in …

In an important ruling to protect the rights of children whose paternity is questioned in a matrimonial dispute between parents, the Supreme Court has ruled that when husband and wife cohabited together, and no impotency is proved, then the child born from their wedlock is “conclusively presumed to be legitimate”, …

The Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud firmly refused the ‘suggestions’ offered by the government in a sealed cover on the formation of a proposed committee to enquire into the Hindenburg report on the Adani Group. This signals the Supreme Court’s acute awareness of how ‘sealed cover jurisprudence’ has begun …

Within a month of retiring from the Supreme Court of India, Justice S. Abdul Nazeer has been appointed Governor of Andhra Pradesh. Like many others, I believe it is no coincidence that he was a part of the Constitution Bench that decided the Ayodhya Ram Mandir land issue. In the …

The normally peaceful residents of Ladakh are in agitation mode. They are set to gather in Delhi today to pursue their demand for special constitutional status, which would allow them to decide on a development path that safeguards the region’s fragile ecological and cultural heritage. On January 26, one of …

Sporadically, but surely, palaeontologists report intriguing discoveries from India. In January, a team discovered 92 dinosaur nesting sites with 256 fossilised eggs of the titanosaurus — among the largest of its kind, from 100-66 million years ago, when ‘India’ was a continent and yet to merge into the Eurasian land …

A draft Bill, aimed at protecting India’s geological heritage that includes fossils, sedimentary rocks, natural structures, has raised alarm in India’s geo-sciences and palaeontology community. The Draft Geo-heritage Sites and Geo-relics (Preservation and Maintenance) Bill, 2022, while deemed necessary by several researchers, vests powers entirely in the Geological Survey of …

The questionable elevation of advocate L. Victoria Gowri as a judge of the Madras High Court epitomises the problematic nature of the system of judicial appointment. It also portends a government-driven project to take over the Bench through its favourites Earlier, the Union Law Ministry had processed the recommendation concerning …