Current Affairs legalIssues:

Every sexual crime incident is an interesting news item for media- both print and electronic. When an international school principal is involved as an accused in such a crime where he was arrested for alleged rape of a 11th class student of 17 years, the TV channels showed building shots of all the international schools of Hyderabad unmindful of the fact they are suggesting that those schools also are dangerous for the girls. A case of rape and criminal intimidation has been booked against Salahuddin Ayub, Principal of Parkwood International School at Manneguda near Vikarabad on the outskirts of Hyderabad (Times of India, Hyderabad Newsreport, 22nd July, 2010). While the parents of the girl from Mumbai alleged that she was repeatedly raped by the principal during the last one year, the school authorities denied claimed that they were aimed at defaming their popular school, which has branches in the Middle East.

click here for SC judgement on Babli Project

THE order of a division bench of the Kerala High Court banning to hold public meetings beside public roads has sparked massive protests in the state. While banning public meetings by the roadside, the court further directed the police, public work department and local self-governments not to grant permission to hold such meetings and asked the police to remove the stages and equipments if such meetings are held by the roadside. It also directed the police to take legal action against any violation.

The Indian government must take tough actions against corrupt people and e-governance has a great potential to improve accountability. by making major public projects data available online, corruption can be curbed and accountability enhanced in the country.

India  needs  leadership who can take tough decisions and deal firmly with corrupt people.  E-governance can help reduce corruption and improve accountability by making budgets and progress reports of major public projects available.  Providing Free accessibility to any citizen and identifying people responsible for causing delay in decision making  will work wonders,”

• National Litigation Policy Document Released
• National Litigation Policy will be implemented from 1st July,2010

The centre has formulated in National Litigation Policy to reduce the cases pending in various Courts in India under the National Legal Mission to reduce average pendency time from 15 year to 3years. Launching the new Litigation Policy  Law minister Dr M. Veerappa Moily asserted that the purpose of the new Law is also reduce the government Litigation cases in the courts so that they can devote more time in resolving other pending cases. He said this policy will be implemented from 1st July,2010.

The Bhopal verdict has exposed the soft ugly underbelly of the entire Indian judicial, regulatory, administrative and corporate governance systems, not to mention the scandalous behaviour of the US government and US-based MNCs. The judgment is only one piece in a sordid saga going back 26 years, one which will continue to unfold, not just in this case but in other spheres too.

Bhopal happened because all norms and rules were flouted in the full knowledge that the system would keep violations from the public gaze and protect the perpetrators if anything went wrong. The Carbide factory handled highly hazardous chemicals, yet dense residential areas were allowed to come up around it, there were no warning systems, no emergency plans. The parent Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) in the USA knowingly transferred technology with absent or under-designed safety systems to its Indian subsidiary UCIL and just watched as the latter cut corners on safety procedures.

THE verdict for punishing the guilty in the world’s worst industrial accident — the Bhopal gas tragedy — has finally come after a quarter of a century. This has been universally decried as both justice delayed and justice denied. In fact, the verdict is worse. It is plain injustice, indeed, criminal injustice! While the main accused, Warren Anderson, the then chairman of the Union Carbide, continues to live peacefully in New York, eight other Indian (of whom one is now dead) executives of Union Carbide have been sentenced to a mere two years imprisonment. The local court also fined them about Rs one lakh each and the Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL), Rs five lakh. The convicted persons were immediately thereafter freed on a personal bond of Rs 25,000 each.

The details of the verdict that has now come in the Bhopal gas case need no iteration. It is, in any case, clear that the verdict, that came 25 years, 6 months and 5 days after the worst industrial disaster in the world claiming no less than 25,000 lives, has exposed the weaknesses of the Indian legal-judicial system that easily succumbs to the Indian and foreign corporate houses and the imperialist powers. It also shows what fatal consequences may flow from the impotent willingness of premier parties in our country, like the Congress and the BJP, to capitulate before the US imperialists.

Reacting to the verdict, the Madhya Pradesh state committee of the CPI(M) has castigated the dismal and contrived failure of the successive Congress and BJP government even in bringing to book the Union Carbide boss Warren Anderson, the main accused in the Bhopal crime. Saying that the Indian judicial system has strangulated itself in the interest of US corporate capital, the CPI(M) state committee said the government of India could harvest only Headleys by sowing the crop ofAndersons.

The Bhopal Gas case verdict, which after twenty-five years awards a sentence of just two years to the culprits, is a travesty of justice that shames India and insults the memory of the thousands killed. The verdict is the culmination of a deeply flawed process involving the culpability of Governments, investigative agencies and even the highest court of the land. These institutions compromised the interests of the country and the victims, diluting the charges, enabling the American CEO Warren Anderson to escape, and limiting liability to a paltry compensation of only 470 million dollars. These are acts of connivance to help the powerful US company and its Indian entity.

Striking a cordial note, the warring Ambani brothers on Sunday agreed to dump their differences and strike out contentious non-compete agreements saying this would eliminate any room for further “disputes”.

Announcing that they would also expeditiously negotiate gas supply agreement in accordance with the Supreme Court order earlier this month, the groups of both Muekesh and Anil vowed to fulfill vision of their father Dhirubhai Ambani, after whose death they separated after an acrimonious fight.

Without Prejudice to the EGoM

THE Supreme Court in its recent verdict on KG Basin Gas case has very rightly reiterated that the Constitution envisages exploration, extraction and supply of natural gas to be within the domain of government function and it is the duty of the government to make sure that these resources are used for the benefit of the citizens of this country. It has therefore directed that the policy of the government, including the gas utilisation policy and the decision of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) would be applicable to the pricing in the present case. The verdict is a reminder to the government that the benefits of gas should flow to the people of this country by virtue of Article 297 of the Constitution of India,

Uttar Pradesh has topped the list of states in recovery of fake Indian currency with a face value of over Rs two crore by different government agencies during the year 2009.

According to latest official data, highest recovery and seizures were done from Uttar Pradesh followed byMaharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu andChandigarh.

In what could be a severe blow to Anil Ambani group seeking cheap gas from elder brother Mukesh- led RIL, the Supreme Court has ruled that govt has the last word on pricing and utilisation of national asset.

Giving its verdict on the four-year-old Ambani battle that was intertwined with a bitter public wrangling, a three-judge bench of the court headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan on  May7^, 2010, said the Ambani family MoU dividing the gas was not binding, both legally as well as technically.

Pakistani national Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone survivor from amongst the ten gunmen who carried out the horrific 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, was sentenced to death by a special court. Kasab was given death penalty on five counts including waging war against the nation, murder, criminal conspiracy and committing terror activities. Kasab, 22 was convicted of all 86 charges against him by a special court in Mumbai for his role in the attacks which killed 166 people, including 23 foreigners.

Consultancy firm Deloitte has said more than half of the business professionals covered in its new survey feel that more corporate financial statement frauds will be uncovered in 2010 and 2011 than the last three years.

According to the survey of around 2,100 business professionals, 56 per cent of the respondents think more financial statement frauds will be unearthed this year and in 2011 than the last three years combined.

Professor Madabhushi Sridhar

Director, Center for Media Law Studies & Policy

NALSAR University of Law Hyderabad

I. Introduction: The Fall

1. Unethical Mixing: ‘Facts are sacred and comment is free’ is the basic norm of journalism. This is reinterpreted as ‘news is sacred and views are free’. But the situation is changed to: ‘false news is for a price and the views are free’[1].  The media, precisely regional media in Andhra Pradesh was involved in most unethical ‘news selling’ activity for exchange of unaccounted money, with no receipt, from contesting candidates irrespective of newspaper’s known lenience towards a political party. It was not even news selling but misrepresentation to voters for consideration. The Journalists organizations criticized this as blatant abuse of freedom of speech and expression to camouflage advertisement as news and in the process they were violating the norms under Indian Penal Code, Income Tax Act, and Representation of People Act, 1951.

The Report of the Group of Ministers on National Security has six chapters. The Ministry of Defence has been designated as the nodal Ministry for implementation of Chapters VI on ‘Management of Defence’, which contains 75 recommendations. Out of these, 63 recommendations have been implemented and action on four recommendations is in various stages of progress.

Eight recommendations of the Report relate to the establishment of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). A decision on this matter would be taken after completion of the ongoing consultations with political parties.

1.       The PDS Control Order, 2001 came into existence almost eight years ago. The Targeted Public Distribution System had been in operation since 1997.  It was realized that the large scale diversion can be curbed by computerization and therefore provision was made for providing computerized codes to the Fair Price Shops (FPS) and monitoring the functioning of the Public Distribution System at the FPS level through the computer network of the National Informatics Center (NIC) installed in the District NIC centers.

The Andhra Pradesh government on 25^th March 2010 received a major boost with the Supreme Court, in an interim order, upholding the validity of 4 percent reservation provided to backward members of Muslim community in the state.

A bench of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices J M Panchal and B S Chauhan, however, referred the issue to aConstitution bench to examine the validity of the impugned Act since it involved important issues of the Constitution.

Affirmative actions refer to at least three kinds of measures available to help the socially disadvantaged: affirmative action, positive discrimination, and strict quotas in school/college admissions and jobs. It can take many forms, from setting up special schools or vocational guidance facilities to declaring that the government will encourage specific groups to apply for jobs. Quota-based seats for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in educational institutions, legislative bodies and public offices was seen as a way of ensuring equal opportunity for people who had been excluded, subordinated and denied social and economic resources. Caste-based distinctions, especially untouchability and forced segregation were seen as forms of discrimination that placed the excluded community in a terribly disadvantaged position.