India – Page 2 – RightsViews

Suffering , Grievability and Covid-19 – An Indian Nightmare

October 21, 2020October 21, 2020 by Rowena KosherNo Comments

By Guest Contributor Yash Karunakaran. Yash is an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign College of Law and the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR). He is currently an advocate practicing before the Supreme Court of India and the Delhi High Court. He is also involved with a civil society organization that helped arrange for travel, food and medicine for migrant workers stuck as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown in India. This organization has filed Petitions before various Courts challenging state restrictions placed on the return of migrant workers. The primary weapon used to counter epidemic outbreaks within the Indian subcontinent has, for the past 123 years, remained the 1897 Epidemics Act. The legislation grants special powers to State Governments, allowing them to make their own regulations to counter the spread of disease. This piece analyses the colonial history of the Indian response to epidemics, highlighting how it colours the manner in which the Indian...

Erosion of the Right to Freedom in Kashmir: How India Violated Established Principles of Constitutional and International Law

December 11, 2019 by Rowena KosherNo Comments

Guest Contributor Bhaskar Kumar is a 3rd year student at National Law School of India University, Bangalore. His areas of interest include criminal justice, human rights, constitutionalism and international law. He writes for a number of platforms including law review blogs and media platforms like The Hindu, Live law JILS-NUJS etc. In anticipation of unrest after altering the special constitutional status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian government detained several political leaders and imposed a broad restriction on freedom of movement and press in August 2019. These restrictions were imposed in the aftermath of abolishing article 370 of Indian Constitution. This article was part of the Constitution of India which provided special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. By virtue of this article, the people of Jammu and Kashmir used to enjoy some privileges including exclusive property rights. The government justified this amendment by considering it a step that ensures the complete integration of the state into...

The Ayodhya Ruling and the Rule of Law

December 11, 2019 by Rowena KosherNo Comments

Guest Contributors Prannv Dhawan and Parth Maniktalaare are law students at NLSIU Bengaluru and Campus Law Centre, Delhi respectively. Prannv is the founding editor of the Law School Policy Review and Parth is an editor of the online journal, Polemics and Pedantics. A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court in India has unanimously held that the possession of the most-contested piece of land in Indian political history—the 2.77 acres where the Babri Masjid Mosque once stood—should in fact be exclusively given to the Hindu claimants of the case. At the same time, the Court invoked its special power to do ‘complete justice’ under Article 142 to restitute the damage caused by ‘egregiously illegal’ idol installation (1949) and Masjid demolition (1992). Hence, it ordered the government to allot an alternate plot of 5 acres to the Sunni Muslim Waqf Board at a ‘prominent place’ in Ayodhya for the construction of a new mosque. A few words have become an indispensable part of the...

On Constitutional Morality: Thoughts from Delhi

October 22, 2019October 21, 2019 by Rowena KosherNo Comments

Guest Contributor: Anmol Mittal is a 5th Year Student at National Law University, Delhi. The question of what the true import of the term “Constitutional morality” is has become pertinent following India’s (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Presidential Order C.O. 272, and the subsequent State Reorganisation Bill introduced in the parliament. On the morning of August 5, through a combination of the Presidential order and the Reorganisation bill, the special status accorded to the State of Jammu & Kashmir, by way of Article 370, within the Indian Union, was revoked. To examine where the moral compass of India’s Constituent document lies, it’s necessary that the Constitution be considered as a ‘whole’, and not as being contained ‘essentially’ in Part-III on Fundamental Rights (Part-III rights). For the uninitiated, Part-III rights are, in a manner of speaking, India's version of the bundle of rights in America guaranteed through the 1st, 5th, 6th amendments and so on. Article 19 corresponds directly with the 1st Amendment, Article 20...

Decoding India’s Faltering Extradition Track Record: A Human Rights Approach

October 9, 2019October 7, 2019 by Rowena KosherNo Comments

Guest Contributor: Tanishk Goyal is a second year law student at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. On July 2 2019, The U.K refused to extradite a couple who were accused of murdering their adopted Indian boy and his brother-in-law in order to receive a life insurance payout. The UK’s reasoning for this refusal took place against the backdrop of the inhumane and degrading human rights conditions prevailing in India. This discharge added on to the intractably dismal extradition track record of India, despite it having ratified the 1949 Geneva Conventions and The U.N Convention Against Corruption which adopt the framework for extradition and mutual legal assistance between countries for an expedited and effective extradition process. One of the fundamental reasons for this situation is India’s international perception as a country which cannot ensure the safety of the offenders it extradites. Although India has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which lays down a human-rights based...

Of Orwellian Times and Beyond: Examining India’s Recently Amended Anti-Terror Law

September 4, 2019September 5, 2019 by Rowena KosherNo Comments

Guest Contributor Ashwin is an Advocate practising across trial and appellate courts in India. He belongs to '18 B.A.LL.B.(Hons.) class of Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, India. When governments decide to condemn one as being “involved in terrorism” simply on the basis of belief and nothing else, one cannot help but wonder whether “Thought Police” from George Orwell’s 1984 is being brought to life. To be condemned solely on beliefs would indeed be blasphemous for the vires of justice. The Indian Parliament has recently introduced a process which allows individuals to be subjectively designated as terrorists by the government. The recent amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act allow the Indian Central Government to designate any individual as being “being involved in terrorism” based solely on, as stated,“if [the Central Government] believes that such… individual is involved in terrorism.” Violation of the Principles of Natural Justice & lack of Procedural Fairness These recent amendments to the Act threaten the principles of natural justice...

Will the ‘not so accessbile’ Rajasthan State Assembly Elections, 2018, be a precursor to the Lok Sabha Elections in 2019?

May 6, 2019May 1, 2019 by Rowena KosherNo Comments

The 2019 Lok Sabha Elections are happening throughout India in several phases. At the present moment, the entire nation is embroiled in debates about who will be elected into the next Indian government, as well as reflections on the achievements of the current administration. Part and parcel to the upcoming elections is an important element that has been widely neglected: the question of accessibility. There is a broad lack of awareness about the issue of accessible elections, exasperated by a tendency for discourse to focus on more “appealing” election issues such as development, poverty, corruption and nationalism. ‘Accessible Elections’ was finalised as the central theme for all the upcoming elections by the Election Commission of India (ECI) during the National Consultation on Accessible Elections held in the first week of July, 2018. The aim is to increase the participation of Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) in elections by making them more inclusive and accessible to increasing numbers of people from different communities....

Children Languishing Behind Bars: A Grim Reality of Indian Prisons

September 6, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

By Vasudev Singh and Karan Trehan, students of law in India at RML National Law University and NALSAR University of Law, respectively. A recent revelation by the Government of India concerns the condition of children residing in prisons with their mothers and raises an important question regarding the basic human rights guaranteed to these children. As of 2015, Indian prisons accommodate some 419,623 prisoners (including pre-trial detainees/remand prisoners). Out of them, 4.3 percent— or around 18,000— are women. Women who face trial or who are found guilty of a crime are allowed to keep their children with them during their time in jail. Approximately 1,866 children lived in prison with their mothers at the end of 2015, according to prison statistics. According to the Indian constitution, the state governments are assigned to the administration and management of prisons. This means that the state governments can make prison laws according to their own discretion and requirements. However, these state powers remain subject to other centrally-enacted laws such as the Prisons Act, 1894. As a result,...

Ensuring Healthcare in India by Going Beyond Politics

July 19, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

By Ananye Krishna, a student at Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad, India The government of India launched the Ayushman Bharat - National Health Protection Mission in late March 2018 to provide health coverage of Rs. 5 Lakh (or approximately $7,335) per year for all Indian families. This was a much needed reform measure in the Indian healthcare system, but the question remains whether the government made required infrastructural changes in order to ensure the full benefits that would allow the Indian people to access their fundamental human rights to healthcare. The poor state of healthcare in India was illustrated last year when more than 60 children died in a government hospital because of inadequate infrastructure. This was not an isolated incident. There have been cases of fires breaking out in hospitals and of surgeries being conducted en masse under extremely poor conditions. Such incidents demonstrate that the right to health as guaranteed by the Indian constitution is being violated through lack of adequate reform. Reports suggest that...

Death Penalty for Child Rapists in India: Populist, Hasty, Counterproductive

June 26, 2018September 29, 2018 by Genevieve Zingg4 Comments

by Shardool Kulkarni, a law student at the University of Mumbai This January, an eight-year-old girl hailing from a minority shepherding family in India was abducted, gang raped and brutally murdered in the Kathua region of Jammu and Kashmir. In the subsequent months, the incident generated polarized reactions in India and around the world, with public outcry juxtaposed against the response from individuals in authority and alleged politicization of rape owing to the victim’s minority status. The ensuing public discourse has placed the ruling dispensation headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi under intense scrutiny, particularly in relation to the government's stance and policies regarding child rape. In April 2018, the Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 2018 was promulgated. The said ordinance brought in several changes to the existing legal framework pertaining to child rape in India, the most significant being the imposition of the death penalty as punishment for rape of a girl below the age of twelve years. The move, while hailed by...