2023: The Year of the Surajmukhi Court
A long look at 2023 and how the courts let India down.
Supreme Court’s Judgment on Article 370 – 3 Articles
In upholding the removal of J&K’s special status and its downgrading, the SC has imperilled the rights of States and weakened the limits on the Union’s power; Also: ‘The Last Pillar of Indian Democracy Has Fallen’; and: ‘The Supreme Court’s Article 370 Judgment Is Injustice Writ Large’.
The Decline of Our Institutions – 3 Articles
‘The Supreme Court Never Fails to Disappoint’: For all its comments favouring the petitioners, it does not go against the government in its orders. ‘SC “Appears to Foster” Culture of Secrecy, Does Not Seek Electoral Bond Details from SBI’; ‘Decaying Institutions and Diminishing Democracy of the Indian Republic’.
Are the New Criminal Law Bills Really Anti-Colonial? Here’s Why Experts Say No
Home Minister Amit Shah promised that the bills would overhaul our criminal justice system. However, the proposed reforms may be colonial in spirit too.
As Dr Umar Khalid Completes 1,000 Days Behind Bars, It Is the Justice System Which Is on Trial
Dr Umar Khalid, who has been languishing in prison for his alleged seditious speech during the Delhi riots, completed 1,000 days in prison yesterday. A report from an event held to mark the day.
The Principles of Democracy Can’t be Scarified at Altar of Majoritarianism
Former Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court Justice Mathur’s keynote address at the 11th Rajasthan state convention of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties in Bhilwara on April 1 and 2.
‘You Breach Your Own Oath of Office’, Retd Civil Servants React to Rijiju’s ‘Barbs’ at Judiciary
Over 90 signatories have penned an open letter to the Law Minister seeking an explanation from Rijiju on the legal basis of his “open threat in a public forum” to some retired judges.
Let Us All Defend the Constitution Against the Times
Perhaps we Indians may learn from the example of our beloved Israelis, and wake up to the unabashedly voiced desire to curtail the highest judiciary.
Long Forgotten: India’s Pretrial and Undertrial Prisoners
The country’s jails teem with poor and marginalised people detained without justification.
The Ends of Justice: a Case of Bilkis Bano
A lone woman’s painful struggle for justice, and the recent remission granted to 11 convicts who had assaulted her during the 2002 Gujarat riots, sits, disturbingly, at the centre of this poem.