Supreme Court

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a catena of contractual disputes. The paper synthesises the Indian Contract Act and relevant case laws to present a legal position on force majeure, frustration of contract and contractual gaps, in the context of COVID-19. Using the economic analysis of law, it examines contractual disputes from various sectors, including power, construction and real estate, rental, event management and hospitality, and analyses these disputes from legal- and economic-efficiency points of view. Where contracts are not a good instrument for achieving equitable distribution of economic gains and losses, public policy is better suited to address equity and other related issues arising from long-term contracts.

The recent bill passed in Parliament deems the elected government of Delhi irrelevant.

Two recent observations of the Supreme Court have the potential of being a game changer in Indian politics, with regard to the power of the speaker in determining questions of defection resulting in the disqualification of a member of the legislature. These two observations are analysed and their significance in the anti-defection jurisprudence is assessed. The ubiquitous relationship between the anti-defection jurisprudence and the tenets of inner-party democracy needs to be understood, especially against the backdrop of recent political events where significant upheavals have taken place within party set-ups across the political spectrum.

The Supreme Court’s intervention (Rakesh Vaishnav v Union of India 2021) in the ongoing protests and debate over the three controversial “farm laws”¹ has been met with a storm of criticism (Hegde 2021; Yamunan 2021).

Farmers’ refusal of the Supreme Court committee marks an astute recognition of democratic values.