This segment highlights the important issues of the Indian Legal System of the week objectively and with a magnified legal lens factually.
What made Headlines from the Supreme Court of India this week?
1. The Supreme Court has orders in Justice V. Eswaraiah's plea challenging the order of Andhra Pradesh High Court directing probe into an alleged conspiracy against Supreme Court and High Court judges. What is this controversy really about? The Judge had the Supreme Court against an order of the Andhra Pradesh High Court whereby an investigation was sought to be conducted into a private conversation between himself and a suspended Munsif Magistrate. This conversation pertained to the alleged hatching of a ‘serious conspiracy’ against the High Court Chief Justice and a Senior sitting Judge of the Supreme Court. The High Court therefor appointed Retired Justice R.V. Raveendran to submit a report on the basis of an enquiry, as to the genuineness of the alleged conversation in the pen-drive, the persons involved and undisclosed interests of the third party. It was against this order that an SLP was preferred in the supreme court by Justice Eswariah.
Case Title: Justice V. Eswariah Vs. UOI
Bench: JJJ Ashok Bhushan, Subhash Reddy, BR Gavai
2. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board has Plea's which seek Uniform Laws related to divorce, maintenance & alimony, stating that they are against the spirit of Articles 14, 15, 21 and 25 of the Constitution. The petition is already being heard before a CJI SA Bobde led bench. The petition by Ashwini K Upadhyay seeks removal of anomalies in the matters of maintenance and alimony in order to make them uniform for all citizens. A separate one, seeks Court intervention in matrimonial Muslim Personal Law, challenging Section 2 of the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, averring that it seeks to recognize and validate the practice of Polygamy and Nikah-Halala.
Case Title: Ashwini K Upadhyay Vs. UOI
Bench: CJI SA Bobde, JJ AS Bopanna & V. Ramasubramaniun
3. The Supreme Court has the grant of an extra attempt for civil services examination aspirants who could not take the examination in October 2020 on account of Covid19. The Court found no infirmity in the order by respondent authority which was impuged before top court. Court further observed that Several other exams by the Centre and State must have been conducted during the said period and the case of the petitioner cannot be taken into isolation for the purpose of seeking additional attempt on the ground of COVID 19 pandemic, more so, in the absence of any such provision under the Rules of 2020.
Case Title: Rachna & Ors v. Union of India
Bench: JJJ. Ajay Rastogi, Indu Malhotra, A.M. Khanwilkar
Apex Court Judgments for the Week
Important Highlights from High Courts and Other Courts:
2. . Single Bench of Justice R. Hemalatha of Madurai Bench of Madras High Court has recently quashed the order passed by Assistant Commissioner of Police, Thilagar Thidal (Law and Order) Range, Madurai City rejecting the petitioner’s request of conducting general awareness campaign regarding Sri Rama Temple in Ayodhya.
3. Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya, while dismissing the petition challenging validity of the Circular, held, “Not only the economic interests of India but bilateral relations with Singapore (both of which are recognized in the relevant Office Memoranda as valid grounds of issuance of LOC) will suffer in the event the petitioner is permitted to leave India, thereby evading repayment of the huge loans taken by him from the Singapore branch of respondent no.3, a nationalized and Government undertaking bank of India.”
4. Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana granted bail to Ravi observing that even though it was conscious of the difficult task to prove the prosecution's case in the affirmative viz. the offence of conspiracy, it was virtually impossible for the defence to prove it in the negative and that even though the police made a conscious decision to arrest the accused, it could not be permitted to restrict Ravi's liberty further.
5. and education which includes extra curricular activities such as swimming is not a "service" within the meaning of the Act.
- Sanya Talwar is the Editor of Lawbeat
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