Weekly Legal Updates

We bring you the updates for last week. Hope it updates you with all the news from legal world.

Updates: 03th January to 11th January 2015:
In a major move the Supreme Court has revised rules regarding its selection of judicial clerks which allows non-NLU students to apply.  The new rules, published on the Supreme Court’s website, specifies that applicants can come from any law college accredited by the Bar Council of India (BCI).

The President of India  promulgated the Citizenship (Amendment) Ordinance, 2015 on January 06, 2015 with immediate effect which provides for the following amendments to the Indian Citizen Act, 1955:

• At present one year continuous stay in India is mandatory for Indian Citizenship which is relaxed stating that if the Central Government is satisfied that special circumstances exist, it may, after recording such circumstances in writing, relax the period of twelve months specified upto a maximum of thirty days which may be in different breaks.

• To enable for registration as Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) by a minor, whose parents are Indian Citizens.

• To enable for registration as Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) by a child or a grand-child or a great grandchild of such a citizen.

• To enable for registration as Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) by such spouse of a citizen of India or spouse of an OCI registered under Section 7A and whose marriage has been registered and subsisted for a continuous period of not less than two years immediately preceding the presentation of the application under this section.

• In respect of existing PIO card holders central government may, by notification in Official Gazette, specify a particular date from which all existing PIO card holders will be deemed to be OCI card holders.

The Delhi High court dismissed a plea against Amir Khan starrer movie- PK, holding that there was no substance in the allegations leveled against the movie, in the PIL filed by Ajay Gautam. The Court also observed that the provision for appeal against the CBFC’s decision on certification of films was restricted to film-makers. Mr. Gautam had alleged that the movie defamed and maligned the Hindu religion and culture. It was also contended that the movie hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus.

In a submission made before the Apex Court, the Central Government has said that it wants to stop NGOs that do not submit their balance sheets of last three years. The Central Government represented by the Additional Solicitor General P S Patwalia submitted to the Bench headed by Chief Justice of India HL Dattu that the submission of balance sheets by the NGOs must be a condition precedent for grant of funds.

The Supreme Court has published the in-house mechanism adopted by it in 1999 to deal with complaints against the judges of the Supreme Court and High Court in its website. This has been published pursuant to its judgment in the sexual harassment case involving a sitting judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. In the above judgment the Court relied on the in-house mechanism and had scrapped the investigation initiated by the Madhya Pradesh Chief Justice on the ground that it was not in compliance with the in-house mechanism.

Siemens, Dong Energy and London Array – the world's biggest operating offshore wind farm – are all heading for a UK court showdown with German turbine-maker Enercon over alleged patent infringement of 'Storm Control' technology developed by the latter's founder, Aloys Wobben. The Wobben Properties lawsuit names Siemens, Dong and turbine-installation specialist A2Sea as defendants.  The 630MW London Array – which is already using 175 3.6MW Siemens turbines – is the subject of a similar but separate action, and is set to join the other defendants in contesting the case at a High Court hearing in London, currently scheduled for June. Enercon had previously successfully sued turbine OEM Gamesa in Spain over the 'storm control' patent, a verdict which is currently being appealed.

We hope that this summarizes the last week's News. Your comments and suggestions are welcomed.

Until next post of weekly News updates.

Anjana Srinivasan, (2nd Year student of IIT Kharagpur Law School)

For 'OFF Court.'

Disclaimer: This blog or any post thereof is not to be considered to be in any way associated with the official stand of IIT kharagpur or RGSOIPL on the issues being discussed in the said post. The opinions on the blog are the authors own and should not be considered as legal advice.

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The Art of Secularism

Author: Antriksh Mishra, 3rd Year student of IIT Law School, IIT Kharagpur.

"India is my country and I am proud to be its citizen"—one thing which no Indian will think twice before speaking. Now let’s change the parameters a little–"Hinduism is my religion and I am proud to be a Hindu." Now that is something people think twice before speaking. It has happened to me and to many others I know. 

In this post I would try to dwell the reasons for such hesitation. Let’s begin with Art. 25 of the Constitution of India, the famous "Freedom of Religion" clause. Firstly the clause allows "all persons" to "practice", "profess" and "propagate" their religion. This would include all individuals whether or not citizens of India.

The words "practice", "profess" and "propagate" cover any and all religious activities, even asking other persons to join your religion (as long as such joining is without force or consideration) is allowed (as mentioned by K. Santhanam during the Constituent Assembly Debates). And this beckons the question, "Why the hesitation?"

One might say that the answer is more of a psychological nature than legal. I would however respectfully disagree. The answer is more related to Indian Polity and Law than to Psychology.

Let’s start from the common understanding of the word secular and try to answers some fundamental questions.

1. Is being secular the anti-thesis of being religious?

The answer to this is a quite emphatic “No”. If being secular were the anti-thesis of being religious, both of these could not have found place in our Constitution. Secularism as referred to in the Preamble and religious freedom as referred to in Art. 25, as propounded by The Keshvananda Bharti Judgement, find their place in the basic structure of the Constitution. (Notwithstanding my objection on the way the Keshvananda Judgement was delivered, and how Justice HR Khanna's opinion was not similar to that of the other three majority judges, It is still the law of the land.)

2. Does being religious mean you must follow all preaching of a faith?

Again the answer would be an emphatic a “NO”. Take for example Galileo or Darwin, both of them asked questions and were subjected to great persecution, but today Christianity has evolved and accepted (to a certain extent) their theories, while they were devoted Christians till their dying breath. Now for the legal stand lets read Art 19 and Art 25 together, I have the right to free speech (which allows me any question on any religion) and Freedom of religion (which gives me freedom to choose religion), so no one has the right to doubt one’s faith in a religion, or stop him from practicing a religion based on questions raised by a follower. Religion (in theory) must welcome and clear doubts.

3. When one calls oneself proud to be of the Hindu faith does he become a zealot?

And again the answer is  a ”NO”. What faith you follow is a personal question, whether you choose to be vocal about it is a personal choice. As long as you don't hurt another faith how can there be a question of being a zealot. And this is where Politics comes into the picture. Hinduism in India seems to have become synonymous of RSS or BJP or the Babri Masjid incident. But frankly it is not. Not withstanding the fact that RSS ( the then Hindu Mahasabha) was the only organization other than the Muslim league to not take part in the Quit India movement and their chief in 2006 claimed that Quit India Movement was a failure.  In all fairness the public services done by RSS, Hinduism and Hindu extremists are two different things,just as Muslims are different from Muslim extremist. One does not equate the practices in Muslim majority State of Turkey to that of Saudi Arabia then why isn't such a differentiation available for the Hindu faith. As per the principle of equity Hindus have the same rights and responsibilities as the other minority classes in India. And by virtue of being the majority, the Constitution does not bestow upon them, a higher degree of responsibilities than the other faiths.

I am proud to say that I am religious, I am proud to say I am a Hindu and I am proud to say that I am a Bhartiya, an Indian, a Hindustani (which is actually derived from Indus, but Hey! propaganda is spread by use of selective dissemination of facts, as recently) and still I am secular. I respect other faiths, I ask questions about other’s and my own faith and I wish to leave my faith to future generations, evolved, than what it was when I had it. In this regard I agree with Mahatma Gandhi's views.

Disclaimer: This blog or any post thereof is not to be considered to be in any way associated with the official stand of IIT kharagpur or RGSOIPL on the issues being discussed in the said post. The opinions on the blog are the authors own and should not be considered as legal advice.

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