Musings on India, the law, and policy
Posted in Court on Dec 7th, 2011
Raghbir Singh Sehrawat owned a small plot of land in Haryana. In 2006, the State Government, vide a notification, decided to acquire his land to initiate the development of an industrial sector. Subsequent to the notification, Raghbir Singh filed a petition before the high court wherein it was argued that apart from being agricultural land, [...]
Posted in Court, Democracy, Human Rights, Uncategorized on Jul 5th, 2011
Two years ago I had written about Gantal Raju, a tribal in the village of Lingagiri, Dantewada District Chhattisgarh. About how in 2006 his father had been shot by the forces in Chhattisgarh and he had to watch his sister being raped before his eyes. It was part of a report on 40 families returning [...]
Posted in Court on Jun 12th, 2011
During my studies in civil procedure I chanced upon the Law Commission’s 236th Report on Litigation costs and Supreme Court fees in Corporate Litigation. In an interesting analysis of Supreme Court litigation, the Commission noted that considering the high stakes involved and the use of the Courts resources, corporate litigation has an easy ride in [...]
Posted in corruption on Jun 8th, 2011
The Bihar Government’s earlier initiative to have a strict law on corruption has now withstood a legal challenge. The Bihar Special Court’s Act, 2009 had, amongst other things, authorised for the confiscation of property bought with the proceeds of corruption irrespective of whether it exceeded the alleged amount of corruption. In february, this year, the [...]
Posted in Rule of Law on May 11th, 2011
“The ‘Rule of Law may not always be a good thing. It is still a necessary evil.” So said Joseph Raz in one of his many expositions on the rule of law. The existence of the rule of law today has been vindicated by the recent judgment of the Supreme Court in refusing the curative [...]
Posted in Court, Democracy, Rule of Law on Mar 3rd, 2011
A few days ago,the Government of India filed curative petitions (civil and criminal) in the Bhopal Gas leak case. The civil petition deals with enhancement of compensation as the settlement amount of $470 million was not adequate and the damage foreseen then was far lesser than the actual damage to life and property. In this [...]