PROFESSOR Shamnad Basheer joined the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata, in November 2008 as the first Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor in Intellectual Property Law. Before this, he was Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University law school and a research associate at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC).  He is the founder of several initiatives, including...

-The Hindu The Defence Ministry will challenge a judicial commission's findings on ownership of the plot of land where the controversial Adarsh Housing Society here was constructed. The two-member commission has concluded that though the Ministry was in possession of the land, the owner is the Maharashtra government. (The origins of the Adarsh Housing Society scam go back to February 2000. Though the housing complex was meant for serving and retired defence personnel,...

Inaccuracy in reporting court proceedings has caused friction between the press and the legal community On the morning of 10 August 2011, senior lawyer Harish Salve looked upset as he entered Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.H. Kapadia’s courtroom, holding a newspaper that had published an article on a case he was arguing in the Supreme Court. Salve complained that the article in question, written by a journalist at news agency Press...

-The Times of India   More than a decade after 23 people, mostly women and children, were killed when a mob set ablaze a shelter for Muslims huddled together for safety in Ode during the post-Godhra riots, a Gujarat court on Monday found 23 of the suspects guilty of murder and conspiracy. The Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) has sought the death sentence for those convicted of murder.  The special court in...

Experts agree that the economic and environmental costs of interlinking India's rivers far outweigh its projected benefits. Some people believe it is the one-stop solution to prevent floods and droughts, reduce water scarcity, raise irrigation potential and increase foodgrain production in the country. But others say it is just another grandiose scheme involving huge costs and leading to long-term ecological consequences. The contentious idea of interlinking India's rivers has come...