On 1 February 2021, the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Senior General Min Aung…
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Tag: Constitution
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Analysis of use of UAPA from NCRB data
The use of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967 (“UAPA”) in the last few years needs critical analysis, especially in light of the increasing use of the UAPA. What is surprising is that while the UAPA was enacted in 1967, its constitutionality has never been challenged in any of the High Courts or the Supreme Court. The UAPA has had several amendments, and the most recent amendments being made in 2019 amending Section 35. This amendment allows the Government to even categorize individuals involved in terrorism and not just organizations. It is only the 2019 amendments that have been recently challenged in the Supreme Court in two recent petitions.
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Unemployment Protections in Indian Constitutional History
The COVID-19 outbreak has severely impacted labourers in India especially those working in the informal sector who constitute 90% of India’s workforce. The recent cases in Surat and Mumbai of the unemployed migrant labourers seeking to go back to their hometowns are worrisome. According to the International Labour Organization’s report, Indian informal economy is looking at a job loss for 400 million people.
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Need to introduce the concept of ‘vicarious liability’ for the Police
The mark of a democracy is to let people express their dissent without any reprehension or threat. Democracy itself can only work so long as the differences between groups do not impair a broad substrate of shared values.
The right to assemble peacefully has been enshrined in Article 19(1)(b) of the Indian Constitution. Amid the increasing police brutality against the anti-CAA protestors, the Allahabad High Court’s recent decision of directing the state to give compensation to the AMU students who were injured during lathi-charge and asking the authorities to take action against the erring police officials is nothing less than the silver lining in this saga of despair.
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Why India needs both more and less of Article 370
As of 2020, constitutional democracy in India has taken a less recounted journey, one towards a more imperial Centre and less autonomous states. Democratically elected state governments have been dismissed, States have been demoted to Union Territories, independent constitutional bodies have been subjugated and now the most existential test of all that faces the peoples of India is one of citizenship!
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Freedom of the press: A Constitutional History
Last month the Supreme Court in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India dealt with the issue of continued internet shut down in Kashmir. While the Court did not direct the restoration of internet services, it recognised the internet as a mode to exercise one’s fundamental rights. The judgment also addressed the freedom of press claim: even though it was not encoded in the Constitution, the judgment reiterated the fundamental right to freedom of the press within Article 19 (1) (a). While freedom of the press is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution of India, 1950, there were longstanding demands to make it a part of the constitutional text.
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Bail Decision Making: Are the conditions of bail imposed by courts restrictive?
In the previous posts on bail decision making in India, we noted the relationship between decision making in lower courts and the under-trial prison population. We suggested that substantive law should separately recognise pre-trial and under-trial detention as considerations while granting bail should be different at each stage. An extension of this is that conditions of bail should also vary depending on the severity of the offence and the stage of the criminal justice process. In this post, we explore the different kinds of conditions that courts regularly imposed in Bengaluru, Tumakuru and Dharwad.
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CLPR Workshops | Summary | Constitutional History & the Supreme Court
The Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR) in collaboration with the Praja Foundation organised…
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Mallya Aditi International School | 70th Republic Day | Dialogues on the Indian Constitution
On the occasion of the 70th Republic Day celebrations, elementary school students at Mallya Aditi International School gathered together for a session on the Indian Constitution by Jayna Kothari, Senior Advocate in the Karnataka High Court, and Priya Rao, a lawyer turned academician.
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CLPR | First National Constitution Society Convention 2018 | Summary of Proceedings
On 23rd November 2018, the Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR) organised the National Constitution Society (NCS) Convention 2018. The one-day Convention took place at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Bangalore.
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First National Constitution Society Convention 2018
On 23rd November, the Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR) will organize the First National Constitution…
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NCS Convention 2018 | Radical Social Democracy (Reading 2)
NCS Convention 2018 | Prompt 2 for Student Delegates of the National Constitution Society Convention. Aditya Nigam’s ‘For a Radical Social Democracy’
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NCS Convention 2018 | Selected Student Delegates
The Centre for Law and Policy Research has selected 32 students to be Student Delegates at the NCS Convention 2018. Thank you to all those who applied.
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National Constitution Society Convention, 2018 | Agenda
Agenda for the National Constitution Society Convention 2018. The National Constitution Society is a network of Constitution societies in colleges/universities across India, initiated by the Centre for Law and Policy Research.
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The Constitutional and Civic Citizenship Project
CADIndia website: a digital archive and database of Indian constitutional history with human-tagged original documents that explains and illuminates the contemporary relevance of this history to our contemporary lives [cadindia.clpr.org.in]. Supreme Court Observer website: a living archive of the Supreme Court of India that compiles original materials and daily reports of selected ongoing cases to make apparent the Court’s role as the final interpreter of the Constitution to resolve contemporary problems [scobserver.clpr.org.in].
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National Constitution Society 2018
The Convention will be an opportunity to critically engage with the Indian constitution and develop a plan to preserve, protect and promote constitutional values in the 21st century. The Convention will facilitate collaboration and engagement between student members of the NCS along with eminent lawyers, civil society leaders and retired Judges who will be patrons and will be the first step towards the establishing the NCS as an independent Society.
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Rights in Review | Overview
“Rights in Review″ is our annual review of key Supreme Court judgements. We critically analyse judgements relating to fundamental rights. We assess whether these decisions advance our constitutional mandate for a robust protection of key civil, political and socio-economic life and highlight their relevance and impact on our collective public life.
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Bail Decision Making and Under-Trial Detention: An Introduction
In CLPR’s research on bail decision making in Karnataka, we have designed a qualitative study of court observations over a period of 45 days in lower criminal courts.
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East Regional Round – ConQuest 2017 in partnership with NUJS
East Regional Round of ConQuest 2017 in partnership with NUJS: India’s only national level quiz on Indian Constitution, Politics and history.
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ConQuest Quiz
One of the objectives of the Constitutional and Civic Citizenship Project has been to create a robust civic citizenship. In furtherance to this aim, we will organise an annual Quiz on the Indian constitution and its history aimed at university students to engage with the Constitution in an interactive way.
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ConQuest 2016: National Finals
Participants of the National Finals included the winners and runners-up of the four Regional Rounds that were held across the country. Over 200 hundred teams, from varied disciplines – political science, history, engineering, law, Buddhist studies etc. – participated in the Regional Rounds.
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ConQuest Quiz 2016: North Regional Round
Around 45 student teams participated in the Preliminary Rounds from colleges Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in teams from leading law schools including NLU Delhi, Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA, Campus Law Centre, Army Law Institute Mohali, RGNUL, Patiala; and teams from other prominent institutes like St Stephen’s College, JNU, Department of Buddhist Studies, Hindu College.
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CLPR Comments on the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2016
hile endorsing these criticisms of the draft bill, CLPR has in its comments to the Ministry, highlighted some additional points of concern and has suggested measures which could possibly strengthen the law. For instance, with regard to the enforcement mechanism, CLPR has suggested that it is imperative that there be an identification of nodal authorities such as the National Commission for Women, the Juvenile justice authorities as well as the Labour Department, which are crucial to the smooth and coordinated enforcement of the provisions of the bill. These nodal authorities can receive complaints and take the assistance of support services provided by stakeholders and non-governmental organizations, such as Childline.
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ConQuest Quiz 2016: East Regional Round
Around 50 student teams participated in the Preliminary Rounds from colleges in Orissa, Kolkata, Assam, and other states. Teams from leading law schools NUJS, KIIT Law School, and NLU, Odisha competed with teams from other prominent non-law Universities like College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneshwar.
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ConQuest Quiz 2016 West Round
The Preliminary Round saw intense competition. The Preliminary Round needed a sudden death elimination to decide the 6 teams which would qualify to the Final Round. In the end, two teams from Symbiosis Law College, and one team each from V.M. Salgaocar College of Law, SVKM Pravin Gandhi College of Law, ILS and New Law College Pune qualified for the Finals.
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ConQuest Quiz 2016: South Regional Round
Over 50 student teams participated in the Preliminary Rounds from colleges in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Kerala. Teams from leading law schools SCLU, NLSIU, TNNLS, and NUALS competed with teams from other prominent Universities like IIT-M, St Josephs College, RVCE, APU and BITS-Hyderabad.
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Report on the 9th Annual NLSIR Symposium
The theme of the first session was ‘Constitutional Challenges and Concerns’. The speakers for this session were Mr. N. Venkataraman (Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India), Prof. (Dr). Sudhir Krishnaswamy (Professor, Azim Premji University) and Mr. Alok Prasanna Kumar (Senior Fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy).
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Report on ‘Constituent Assembly Debates in Contemporary times’
The launch event consisted of a discussion around ‘Constituent Assembly Debates in Contemporary Times’. Vineeth Krishna, Research Consultant/Associate Editor, at the Centre for Law and Policy Research, has written a detailed report on the discussion.
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The Foreign and the Indigenous in the Indian Constitution: Constitution Day talk by Arun Thiruvengadam
The Indian constitution used devices of liberal constitutional thought but rejected the liberal idea that constitutions had to perform the sole function of limiting state power. The Indian constitution had to empower the state to enter into the realm of Indian society and transform it by eradicating deeply embedded economic, political and social hierarchies. Whether the project of social transformation has succeeded or failed is another question. But the fact that the framers of the Indian Constitution attempted to use it as a means of revolutionizing Indian society – which no country at that time had done – is something to be proud of.
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Time to Phase Out Tobacco Subsidies
By Aparna Ravi and Apurba Kundu When it comes to tobacco control in India,…
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Defending the Right to Defend: Pressures on the Jadgalpur Legal Aid Group
On October 5, 2015, the Bastar Bar Association in its General Body Meeting passed a resolution prohibiting any lawyer who is not enrolled in the State Bar Council or enrolled in the local bar from practicing in the local Court. The Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group which was established in 2013 and has ever since been working for the cause of the Adivasis in Chhattisgarh has been greatly affected by this resolution.
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Nuclear Suppliers’ Liability and the Attempt to Dilute Section 46
On February 8, nearly two weeks after Prime Minister Modi and President Obama announced that their two countries had achieved a “breakthrough” in their partnership on civil nuclear energy cooperation, the Ministry of External Affairs (“MEA”) finally broke its silence on the details of the deal reached by issuing responses to a list of Frequently Asked Questions. The MEA’s answer to one group of questions is particularly disturbing: that Section 46 of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (the “CLND Act”) does not permit victims of a nuclear accident to bring tort law claims against suppliers.
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CLPR’s Comments to Draft National IPR Policy
In its comments to the Draft National IPR Policy prepared by the IPR Think Tank, CLPR argues that the Think Tank needs to rethink its approach of trying to formulate an omnibus IPR policy and treating stronger IPR protection as being synonymous with innovation and economic development. Instead, any IPR policy needs to find the optimal balance between IPR protection and promoting the democratic diffusion of knowledge and cultural goods, based on empirical evidence and taking into account the domestic political economy context of a country. In particular, CLPR makes three arguments:
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Packing a Punch: How the Ban on Sale of Loose Cigarettes Was Shelved in a Week
Discussion and debate on regulation of tobacco sale must highlight that it is not the concern of the Government to safeguard tobacco company shares. It is, however, unquestionably the duty of the Government to ensure that every sale of cigarette is accompanied by a statutory warning and that regulations do not make it easier for children to afford and access cigarettes.
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Identifying Gender: Thoughts on Implementation of the NALSA judgment
The National Legal Services Authority v Union of India has the potential to play a…
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CLPR calls upon India to protect Privacy against unchecked Internet Surveillance
CLPR has endorsed a set of international principles against unchecked surveillance. The 13 Principles set out for the first time an evaluative framework for assessing surveillance practices in the context of international human rights obligations.
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Sexual Harassment at the Workplace in the view of the Justice Verma Commitee
In the Vishakha Judgment the petitioner sought to enforce the fundamental rights of working women. The said…
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The Economic Times: Why the Supreme Court is not the Bulwark of the Constitution it is made out to be
Sudhir Krishnaswamy from CLPR and Abhayraj Naik from the Law, Governance and Development Initiative of the Azim Premji University,…
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Laying the Foundations of a Solidaristic Welfare State: The Supreme Court on the Right to Education
On April 12 2012, the Supreme Court in Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan v…
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Seminar – Constitutional protection of social rights: Comparative perspectives
Sudhir Krishnaswamy and Jayna Kothari are participating in a Seminar on Constitutional Protection of Social Rights: Comparative Perspectives organised by…