Columns

Black’s Law Dictionary defines census as the official counting or enumeration of people of a state, nation or district. The first detailed pan-India caste census was conducted in 1881.

Relations between the Bench and the Bar, at least in the common law adversarial system, are always strained by the dynamics of operation of the “winner-takes-it-all” principle. Each side has a will to win, but in the final result, only one can succeed and other must lose.

Kerala, a progressive and liberal society, has been hit by a controversy with dangerous portents. Recently, Pala Bishop Mar Joseph Kallarangatt set the cat among the pigeons when he claimed that a new method to convert non-Muslims called “narcotics jihad” was going on in the state.

The executive's reluctance to appoint judges to tribunals is shocking and distressing. The executive should concentrate on running the country instead of obstructing judicial matters and disobeying the Supreme Court’s directions.

Recently, a trainee IAS officer of the 2018 batch was caught on camera issuing orders to “smash the heads” of agitating farmers at Bastara Toll Plaza in Karnal district of Haryana. Some years ago, a senior IAS officer of the state had ordered some firemen in Chandigarh to jump from the fire brigade vehicle “to test their fitness”, resulting in leg fractures in many of them

Victor Hugo said that no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come. Thirty years ago in 1991, the then finance minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, introduced the reforms bill and quoted Hugo in Parliament. That process helped India begin a new economic voyage.

Only nine lawyers have become judges since the establishment of the Supreme Court. The practice to appoint lawyers as judges to the top court provides distinguished lawyers an opportunity to serve on the apex bench that decides the legal destiny of the people.

Despite human rights laws and constitutional jurisprudence, the police are still using third degree methods and illegal torture which often lead to custodial deaths. This represents a serious drawback of the legal system.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a surge in gold loans, showing the distressing shape of the economy. But this is an opportunity for public sector banks and they have increased lending in this sector.

By Kenneth Tiven in New York Five conservative justices of the US Supreme Court used an unsigned order to refuse a case that now turns anti-abortion law over to vigilantes in Texas for enforcement...