Articles by Alok Prasanna Kumar

Having sentenced JusticeC S Karnan to imprisonment for criminal contempt of court, the Supreme Court cannot afford to drift back into complacency about the judiciary’s troubles. The systemic problems with judicial appointment and accountability become obvious when we examine other instances of misbehaviour by judges thathave wrecked damage to the judiciary’s credibility.

courts have yet not recognised the “right to be forgotten” under Indian law. However, there are good reasons to have one’s name dissociated from public records in the interests of privacy and similar concerns, as has been done in the context of victims of sexual assault. It is not an overarching right that should necessarily be available to all irrespective of context. In the absence of any privacy legislation, it is more likely to be a judicially developed remedy in specifi c cases.

Five high courts across India have uniformly held that women employees who have children through surrogacy would be entitled to maternity benefits in accordance with the rules. How they have arrived at this conclusion is quite different in each case, and each judgment presents different approaches to address this legal question. Beyond the legal question, the approaches must also be closely examined for class biases and paternalistic assumptions about motherhood.

​Supreme Court’s judgment on sectarian appeals during election campaigns interprets the Representation of the People Act, 1951 correctly and to its intended effect. The dissenting judgment conflated the substance of the appeal with the identity of the person who is making it, and did not address the scope of the case. The majority judgment’s regulation of election speech is not only necessary to ensure free and fair elections and uphold the secular ethos of the Constitution, but also needed to fulfil the constitutional goal of fraternity. 

The challenge in the Supreme Court and high courts to the current demonetisation exercise requires some serious discussion for what it tells us about the state of the rule of law and constitutional government in India.