-The Hindu There is a Constitutional mandate to hold elections and they should not be postponed, says Court The Calcutta High Court rejected on Monday the West Bengal government's appeal to stay an earlier verdict by a single bench on holding rural polls in 17 districts but observed that hearing on the matter cannot continue for months on end. There is a Constitutional mandate to hold elections and they should not be...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court's verdict last week quashing the President's rejection of a mercy petition by Mahendra Nath Das, who was to hang for a gruesome murder, shows a salutary approach to the question of whether a prolonged delay in disposing pleas for clemency should not be a ground for commuting death sentences to life terms. The court took note of the 12-year delay prior to the rejection of Das's...

-PTI CAG report commands respect and cannot be brushed aside but it cannot be the final word on an issue, the Supreme Court said on Thursday while noting that the auditor's findings cannot be gospel truth as it is subject to scrutiny by Parliament. A bench of justices KS Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra said that CAG's report is always subject to parliamentary debates and it is possible that public accounts committee (PAC)...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court on Monday declined to stay a Gujarat High Court judgment upholding the constitutional validity of the Centre's scholarship scheme for minority students in the State. The High Court, in a majority decision in February, had rejected the Narendra Modi government's contention that the pre-matriculation scholarship scheme was discriminatory, and directed it to implement it. Justices P. Sathasivam and M.Y. Eqbal, while issuing notice on the government's appeal against...

-The Hindu Had the court known that Pratibha Patil was not told of the dissent in the Bhullar case, the outcome of his appeal might have been similar to that of Das's plea The Supreme Court, in the course of just one month, has rendered two judgments that appear to be contradictory. As both the judgments have been rendered by the same Bench, comprising two judges, they need to be studied...