During the last 10 days two land acquisition notifications have been set aside. The Punjab and Haryana High Court (HC) has quashed a Haryana government’s 2002 notification for inappropriately releasing land to private developers. Similarly, the Allahabad High Court has repealed a UP government’s notification under which land was acquired for a private project in 2005. Both notifications have been cancelled on account of procedural lapses. However, these rulings highlight...

With the Delhi high court ruling that the office of the Chief Justice of India comes within the ambit of the Right to Information Act, a long-drawn-out debate will now hopefully find amicable resolution. The ruling of the three-judge bench was on an appeal by the Supreme Court registry against the high court’s single-judge verdict in September. The challenge to the September verdict was that such liberal interpretation of the...

A complete overhaul of the Indian Legal Service is in the offing. The law ministry is preparing a cabinet note for this purpose so as to bring the ILS on a par with the civil services so that the best students out of law schools join the government. It has started consultations with the department of personnel and training in this regard. A senior ministry official said recruitment will begin...

Can a judge be asked under the Right to Information (RTI) Act as to why and how he came to a particular conclusion in a judgment? No, says the Supreme Court. The apex court saw the mischief potential of queries under the RTI Act in relation to a judge and his judgments and a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice B S Chauhan firmly said that a...

The houseboat industry in Indian-administered Kashmir, one of the jewels in India's tourist crown, is threatened with closure. If it does not clean up its act the courts have threatened to close down the houseboats, which have entertained visitors since British times. The boats are intricately carved and often very spacious, but 20 years of low investment during the insurgency against Indian control of the Kashmir Valley have taken their toll....