Decisions under Section 11 of Arbitration & Conciliation Act, Not Binding Precedent

A Division Bench of the Hon'ble Supreme Court has held that decisions passed in section 11 Applications, under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, (“the Act”) are not binding precedents. This judgment was delivered in the case of State of West Bengal & Ors. v. Associated Contractors (incorrectly cited as S.Balachandran v.s M/S Ramaniyam Real Estates Ltd.in some places). The entire text of the judgement can be found here.

Blogging & Law - How to Manage & Protect your Blog/Website

Pavan Duggal,
Indian Cyber Law Expert

Is posting someone else’s copyrighted images on your blog ‘fair use’? Which court has jurisdiction in respect of Indian Blogs, where servers are located outside India?

These questions are answered by Indian Cyber Law Expert, Mr. Pavan Duggal, as he advises bloggers as to how to manage and protect their blogs.

Mr. Duggal stresses on the necessity of having well drafted Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions and Disclaimers, in order to avoid liability for any defamatory or plagiarized content posted on a blogger’s blog by a third party user (visitor) on the blog, under the Information Technology Act, or any other law. Especially Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, under which a blogger can be held criminally liable for comments of the blog visitor.

Review Petitions in Death Sentence Cases not to be by Circulation; only in Open Court & by Bench of atleast Three Judges

  

"When it comes to death penalty cases, we feel that the power of spoken word has to be given yet another opportunity even if the ultimate success rate is minimal."

A five-judge bench of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, headed by Chief Justice R.M. Lodha, by 4-1 majority, in the case of Mohd. Arif @ Ashfaq vs. The Registrar Supreme Court of India & Ors. threw to the wind its approx. 60-year-old rule  and held that hearing of Review Petitions of convicts on death row should not be by circulation but should only be in open Court. The Hon’ble Court further held that hearing of matters in which a death sentence has been passed should be by a Bench of at least three Supreme Court Judges. The majority Judgement was drafted by Hon’ble Justice R.F.Nariman while the dissenting opinion was passed by Justice Chelameshar.

Full text of Judgement can be found here.

Judgement on ‘Honest Concurrent Use’ (Bombay High Court: [ITM Trust & Ors. vs Educate India Society])

Full text of the Bombay High Court Judgement can be found here.

For Plaintiffs: Mr. Aspi Chinoy, Senior Advocate a/w Ms.  Chandana Salgaoncar, Aditya Thakkar i/b Vigil Juris.

For Defendant: Mr. Arvind Chaudhary, i/b Amol Deshpande.

Coram                                                 : G.S.Patel, J.

Judgment Reserved on                       : 16th July 2014

Judgment Pronounced on                   : 15th September 2014

Brief Facts:

The Plaintiffs consisted of a public charitable and educational trust registered under the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950 and its trustees. Till 1991, the Plaintiffs trade mark was "INSTITUTE FOR TECHNOLOGY & MANAGEMENT" in a certain curved/spherical form around a circular device along with another device of a shield at the middle. The Plaintiffs claimed that the trademark was in use since 1993. In June 2010, the Plaintiffs filed an application for registration of the mark "ITM-University" in Class 41, on the pretext that it was in continuous and uninterrupted use since 2002.

Submitting to International Law: What’s the Incentive?

“The considerations that international law is without a court for its enforcement, and that obedience to its commands practically depends upon good faith, instead of upon the mandate of a superior tribunal, only give additional sanction to the law itself and brand any deliberate infraction of it not merely as a wrong but as a disgrace.”[1]

- President Grover Cleveland

I.                   Introduction

Compliance is an essential element of international law. Theories of states compliance with international law not only facilitate in explaining the trend towards law as a positive phenomenon, but they also provide for an vital empirical ground for testing the value of interdisciplinary work and policies for the regulation of organizations and contracts. If States had no incentive to adhere to international norms and standards, international legal regimes and institutions would have no purpose and perhaps the concept of international law would have existed only on paper.

Although a great deal has been written on the validity of international law and its effect on sovereign states, a suitable theory of adherence to it has not ye been developed.[2]

Is Right to Education a Success?

“What sculpture is to a block of marble,

Education is to the human soul”

                                  -Joseph Addison

The RTE act holds, all children regardless of their family backgrounds or individual profiles should have access to a meaningful education that empowers them to be a part of today’s human race all over the world.

The Death Penalty: In Defence of the Abolitionists

"As if one crime of such nature, done by a single man, acting individually, can be expiated by a similar crime done by all men, acting collectively."

-       Lewis Lawes,

(Warden of Sing Sing prison in New York in the 1920s and 30s)

Introduction

Do away with the Death Penalty?

On the dais of the District Court at Ratnagiri, one will find the statue of Late Shri Mancharje Pestanji Khareghat, who served in that Court as District Judge from 1895 to 1900 and again from 1904 to 1910. During his time the death sentence could only be awarded by a judge of the High Court. When Shri Khareghat was offered an elevation to the High Court, he declined on the ground that he could not, and would never be, a party to the death sentence. It is for this reason that the Ld. District Court Judge is still well known among Judges and senior members of the Bar.

Value of FSI and TDR not to be included in Land Value u/s 50C of IT Act

Generally, the provisions of Indian tax laws provide that transfers of immovable property must be at a fair valuation. However, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (‘ITAT’), Mumbai Bench, has ruled, in Income-tax Officer v. Shri Prem Rattan Gupta, that the value of TDR and FSI cannot be the subject mattter of section 50C of the Income Tax Act, 1961.