Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Tuesday remarked that once judges demit office whatever they say is just opinion and is not binding, after former CJI Ranjan Gogoi's comments that the basic structure doctrine was debatable was flagged in the Supreme Court.
Huge backlog of cases in the courts is a major issue and the solution lies in changing laws and strengthening judicial institutions, President Pratibha Patil said in Thane on Saturday.
It is the primacy of the Constitution that determines the stability, harmony and productivity of democratic governance and Parliament reflecting mandate of the people is the ultimate and exclusive architect of the Constitution, he said.
The judiciary, the police, the lawyers and the public will have to know the new laws. It will also endanger settled jurisprudence on the old laws and open up all sorts of minor and major problems that currently do not exist. Whose then was asking for the change? Not the judges or police or lawyers or citizens, points out Aakar Patel.
He further said that he is now looking forward to fulfilling Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision in the Earth Sciences Ministry.
"Not a single woman (from Sandeshkhali) has lodged any FIR. It was me who directed the police to lodge a suo motu case. Our block president has been arrested," she said.
A defiant Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday said there is no law under which Pakistan's judiciary can disqualify him, days after his conviction by the supreme court for contempt.
The Bombay high court on Wednesday berated the Maharashtra government for not appointing a new special public prosecutor (SPP) to represent it in the appeals arising from the 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts case.
The court was hearing two pleas including one alleging delay by the Centre in clearing the names recommended by the collegium for appointment and transfer of judges.
Justice Chandrachud also dealt with questions about criticism by eminent lawyers on the allocation of cases to particular judges and 'bench hunting', and said the allocation of cases is not "lawyer-driven" and vowed to maintain the credibility of the institution of the Supreme Court.
The Congress' attack comes after Law Minister Rijiju wrote to Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud suggesting the inclusion of representatives from the Union and state governments in the Supreme Court and high court collegiums.
The United Progressive Alliance government's efforts to rein in the judiciary may come unstuck as its ambitious bill scrapping the collegium system of appointing judges to the Supreme Court and high courts as the Bharatiya Janata Party is unlikely to allow the passage in the ongoing Parliament session.
The bench said it was not questioning the credentials of the election commissioners appointed but the procedure.
"What the legislature cannot do is to say that we think the judgment is wrong and therefore we overrule the judgment. The judgment of a court cannot be directly overruled by the legislature," the CJI said.
Eminent jurist and former Advocate General of India Soli Sorabjee on Sunday opposed demands to bring higher judiciary under the proposed Lokpal Bill, saying they could be "judged" only by an authoritative body of experts.
Springing a surprise, independents backed by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party won the lion's share of 101 seats in the National Assembly in Thursday's election.
Gilani's remarks, made in the course of a televised address to the nation last night, came against the backdrop of a suo moto case initiated by the Supreme Court following media reports that the government was planning to sack some members of the superior judiciary.
A bench of justices AS Bopanna and PS Narasimha clarified that the rest of the high court judgment would continue to be in force.
Wednesday's high-intensity blast outside the Delhi high court, which killed 12 innocents and injured scores others, is not the first occasion when the judiciary has been under terror attack, says senior analyst B Raman.
The CJI said the higher judiciary is getting 'flooded' with bail matters because of the reluctance at the grassroots level to grant bail.
This has affected all political activity of the party, Maken said at a press conference.
'Right to apprenticeship means that anyone below the age of 25 years with a diploma or other qualifications can demand an apprenticeship with a private, a public sector company or a government organisation. And when he/she demands this, it is the obligation of the government to provide it.'
Former Delhi University professor G N Saibaba, who was released from the Nagpur Central Jail on Thursday after his acquittal in an alleged Maoist links case, said it's a 'wonder that he could come out alive' despite suffering the 'brutal' jail life.
The CJI also dealt with the principle of affirmative action by the state and said it was meant to achieve broader equality and was not against the right to equality.
The Delhi high court has yet again come under attack for the second time in just four months. On May 25, a low intensity blast had rocked the high court
Software icon N R Narayana Murthy on Saturday backed Anna Hazare's movement against corruption and favoured the Prime Minister's Office and the judiciary coming under the ambit of the Lokpal Bill. The chairman and chief mentor of Infosys also supported people's movements taking to the streets to demand an end to corruption."I think in a democracy, pluralism is inevitable. It has to be there. That is what makes democracy stronger," Murthy told reporters.
The acquittal of all 67 accused in the Naroda Gam case in which 11 members of a minority community were killed amounts to "murder" of justice and the verdict will only embolden rioters, said some of the survivors of the communal violence.
Creating a positive reform that does away with an official who constitutes a flawed aspect of Indian democracy will allow the BJP to rightfully claim this as one of its positive legacies, suggests Karan P Shah.
TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee had addressed a public meeting in Kolkata on March 29.
Bidhuri, the BJP MP from South Delhi, had faced strong criticism over his "derogatory" comments against Bahujan Samaj Party MP Danish Ali in the Lok Sabha.
It is a tribute to a system so robustly meritocratic that this team represents India's diversity better than any other institution: The Union Cabinet, our chief ministers, the civil services, the leadership of our armed forces and security agencies, the judiciary and more than all of these, our typical newsroom. That is the biggest message from this breathless rise of Indian cricket, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
The most important lesson is that you have to build your political proposition, and sell it yourself. You can't leave it to the courts, media, NGOs and civil society and expect them to play the role of the Opposition. That's precisely what Mr Modi's challengers have been doing and we know the results, notes Shekhar Gupta.
In his letter to Sitharaman, Venugopal said media reports have exposed the alleged "quid-pro-quo between BJP and several firms, which in a strange coincidence donated to it, after the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Income Tax Department (IT) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and others, raided or searched those enterprises".
A voter's right to know is 'far too important' in democracy than the privacy of a donor, Supreme Court judge Justice Sanjiv Khanna said on Thursday as the apex court scrapped the 2018 electoral bond scheme for funding political parties.
Democracy does not begin and end with elections and the integrity of election process is pivotal for sustaining the democratic form of government, the Supreme Court said on Thursday while striking down as unconstitutional the electoral bonds scheme for political funding.
The committee will consist of retired Supreme Court judges S I Imam and Rohini Marasinghe, and Irangani Perera, retired High Court judge.
In the high courts, only 13.2 per cent women occupied the position of judge.
"From time to time, complaints are received in the Department of Justice (in the law ministry) against sitting as well as retired judges of Supreme Court and high courts. Department of Justice is concerned only with the appointment and service conditions of the sitting judges of the Supreme Court and high courts," he said.
Making it clear that it does not want any confrontation with the judiciary, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board on Sunday constituted a committee to frame a reply to a Supreme Court notice on a petition challenging existence of Islamic courts.
'We need to be far more careful given the fact that while this is group lending, it's essentially unsecured.'
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