Global Backlash Against LGBTQ+ Rights: What India Can Learn

The Republic of Niger has criminalized same-sex relationships for the first time. Previously, Uganda and Burkina Faso enacted anti-LGBTQ laws with severe penalties for same-sex acts and related advocacy. Uganda's legislation includes life imprisonment and the death penalty, while Burkina Faso imposes up to five years' imprisonment. These measures have drawn widespread international condemnation and underscore growing legal discrimination against LGBTQ communities in Africa. Despite threats of...

Liability In Black Box: Piercing Algorithmic Veil

An automated system can determine whether a person receives a loan, progresses in a job application or retains access to welfare. In a 2024 audit of AI recruitment tools, the United Kingdom Information Commissioner's Office found that some tools allowed recruiters to filter candidates by protected characteristics and that others inferred gender and ethnicity from names. The regulator made almost 300 recommendations, including measures to improve transparency and monitor discrimination. When an...

Is Justice Yashwant Varma Still A Judge Of Allahabad High Court?

Does the President's failure to formally notify the acceptance of his resignation mean that he continues to be a judge?

Before Criminalising Disrespect To Vande Mataram, Parliament Must Define The Offence

Union Home Minister Amit Shah has introduced the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026, in the Rajya Sabha. The Bill proposes to insert the words "or the National Song" into Section 3 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, making it punishable with imprisonment of up to three years to "intentionally prevent" the singing of the National Anthem or the National Song, or to "cause disturbance" to an assembly engaged in such singing.The amendment...

Environmental Constitutionalism In Crisis: Why Does India Rank 176th Despite Strong Constitutional Framework?

India has just finished 176th out of 177 countries in the Yale Environmental Performance Index (EPI) 2026, ahead only of Laos, with an overall score of 22.46 against table-topper Estonia's 74.79. The country ranked 174th in environmental health, 171st in ecosystem vitality, and a comparatively less dismal 130th in climate change policy. This is not a one-off embarrassment: India also stood at 176th out of 180 countries in the 2024 edition, and its trajectory since 2014, when it ranked 155th, has...

Digital Coercion: Why Use Of Automated Surveillance In Bail Conditions Violates Article 21

Bail under Sections 437 and 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and the corresponding provisions of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, exists for one statutory purpose, to secure the presence of an accused person at trial. It was never meant to function as an administrative tool through which the state keeps continuous watch over a citizen who stands unconvicted. Yet bail orders across trial courts increasingly require accused persons to share their real time location, submit...

Shield With Cracks: Rethinking Telangana Advocates Protection Act, 2026

The legal profession occupies a unique position in a constitutional democracy. Advocates, as officers of the court, play an indispensable role in the administration of justice and the preservation of the rule of law. In recent years, however, members of the legal fraternity across the country have increasingly reported instances of intimidation, physical assaults, and other forms of harassment arising from the discharge of their professional duties. In Telangana, the brutal murders of advocates...

Court Auction Sale Certificates And Stamp Duty

The Indian Registration Act, 1908 and the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 are two distinct statutes governing separate aspects of the legal validity of instruments. Though both statutes may operate upon the same instrument, they function independently and serve different legislative purposes.Whenever an instrument that is chargeable with stamp duty is executed, it must be engrossed on stamp paper of sufficient value as prescribed under the Schedule to the Stamp Act. Even where an instrument is not...

Weaponizing Judicial Delay. How Insurance Companies Convert Pending Trials Into Profits

Insurance Contracts are fundamentally anchored as the instruments of social and financial security. Drawing its purpose from the principle of uberrimae fidei (utmost good faith), these contracts are not merely commercial arrangements, but are a welfare-oriented mechanism that provides financial stability in times of crisis. However, the operational reality of the insurance industry goes far from the moral standards and is dictated by corporate profit motives, wherein the insurers seek to...

When State Watches Protest: Constitutional Limits Of Facial Recognition Surveillance

Last month, as students gathered at Jantar Mantar demanding accountability for the NEET paper-leak scandal, a mobile command vehicle rolled in behind them, its telescopic mast fitted with cameras sweeping a 360-degree arc over the crowd. Photographs circulated of the vehicle, of AI-enabled smart spectacles worn by personnel, and of handheld scanners pointed at faces in the assembly. Within days, two separate constitutional challenges had been filed one by student activist Aishe Ghosh before the...

Cannabis, Caste, And NDPS Act's Unexamined Asymmetry

Start with two scenes, both in March, both in India. In Varanasi, a government-licensed shopkeeper ladles bhang thandai outside his stall. Crowds move through the ghats. Nobody is arrested. Somewhere else, a basti, a migrant workers' colony, a daily-wage worker is stopped by police and five grams of ganja are found on him. He is arrested under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. Getting bail may not be straightforward. Depending on the circumstances, he could spend months...

India's AI Boom Is Heading For Water Reckoning

The country wants to be the back-end of the global AI economy. Its water tables may not survive the ambition, and its law has little to say about the danger.Artificial intelligence lives in the cloud, but the cloud must be cooled on land. Increasingly, that land is water-stressed India.In December 2025 Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, stood beside Prime Minister Narendra Modi to pledge $17.5 billion for data centers across India, its largest in Asia. Google had already promised $15...