THE LEAFLET BULLETIN

Case against 2016 demonetisation in the Supreme Court: Petitioners convince Constitution bench on the merits of belated hearing

A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court, hearing petitions filed in 2016 challenging the Union Government’s demonetisation decision of November 2016, agreed to issue notices on all impleadment applications and fresh petitions filed in the matter. Further, it gave time to the Union Government and the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) till November 9 to file comprehensive affidavits in the matter. This came in spite of strenuous efforts on the part of the counsel for the Union Government to convince the bench not to hear the matter as it would merely constitute an “academic exercise”.

The bench consisted of Justices S. Abdul Nazeer, B.R. Gavai, A.S. Bopanna, V. Ramasubramanian and B.V. Nagarathna.

At the outset, Solicitor-General of India, Tushar Mehta suggested to the bench that individual problems and issues may be taken on the administrative side, to avoid wasting the time of the Constitution bench. Senior advocate Shyam Divan, for the petitioners, registered his disagreement, calling Mehta’s contention of the matter being a waste of time ‘shocking’. In retort, Attorney General of India, R Venkataramani called the matter “an academic exercise with political implications”.

As RTI Act completes 17 years, huge backlog of pending cases may undo its effectiveness

TODAY marks 17 years of the implementation of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (‘RTI Act’) in India. On October 11, Satark Nagrik Sangathan, a citizens’ group working to promote transparency and accountability in government, published a compilation of key findings of its ‘Report Card on the Performance of Information Commissions in India, 2021-22’.

The report has examined the performance of all 29 state Information Commissions in India, in terms of the number of appeals and complaints registered and disposed off by them, the number of pending cases, the estimated waiting time for the disposal of an appeal/complaint filed in each commission, the frequency of violations penalised by commissions, and the transparency in their working.

As CJI U.U. Lalit recommends his successor, Union Government signals it can cherry-pick from Collegium’s recommendations

ON a day when the incumbent Chief Justice of India (‘CJI’), U.U. Lalit, handed over a copy of his recommendation to elevate the senior-most puisne judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud, as his successor, after his retirement on November 8, the Union Government sent a subtle message by cherry-picking from the Collegium’s recommendations. The coincidence of these two events – both on October 11 – could not be missed by observers, as it clearly suggested who – between the government and the CJI-led Collegium – calls the shots on the question of appointment and transfer of judges in the higher judiciary.

The Union Government sent this subtle message by withholding on Tuesday, the Collegium-recommended transfer of the Orissa High Court Chief Justice Dr. S. Muralidhar as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, while notifying the transfer of the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal as Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court. The government has also appointed the Bombay High Court’s Justice P.B. Varale and the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court’s Justice Ali Mohammad Magrey as the Chief Justices of the Karnataka, and the Jammu & Kashmr and Ladakh high courts, respectively. The Supreme Court Collegium made recommendations to this effect on September 28.

The remedy for India’s high Infant Mortality Rate is to increase investment in primary health care

What trend has been observed in India’s infant mortality and under-five mortality rates in the latest Sample Registration System report?

THERE seems to be some euphoria in the country, with the Sample Registration System 2020 statistical report (‘SRS’) results showing a declining infant mortality rate (‘IMR’) and Under-five mortality rate (‘U5MR’). A number of media reports have praised the decline, especially in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Over the last decade or so, one sees a secular decline of two to three points each year, so in that sense the 2020 results are not spectacular in any way (see Table 1).

Do these trends actually denote significant gains?

The SRS sampling frame is revised every 10 years based on the results of the latest census, with the last revision in 2014. Therefore, the SRS sample within that decennial period is not independent, and hence any overlapping confidence interval for an SRS estimate indicates that the trend or changes observed are statistically insignificant. The 95 per cent confidence intervals for India’s IMR are overlapping between succeeding years, including 2019 and 2020, and hence, there is basically no significant decline in IMR to celebrate. More importantly, there is no significant decline in IMR in both Madhya Pradesh and Kerala between 2015 and 2020. Such decline is expected as India has still a long way to go if we view India’s performance globally.