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2 weeks ago | 
epw.in | Alok Prasanna Kumar
Chief Justice of India, Justice Sanjiv Khanna’s tenure at the Supreme Court saw increased transparency on the part of the Court and re-established the Court’s role in protecting constitutional values. His actions should set the template for his successors if they intend to restore the Court’s damaged credibility in the years to come. With a tenure of little over six months, not much was perhaps expected of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Justice Sanjiv Khanna’s tenure.
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2 weeks ago | 
indianexpress.com | Alok Prasanna Kumar
Can the Union government, through a Presidential Reference under Article 143 of the Constitution, ask the Supreme Court to overturn the two-judge bench judgment curbing the powers of the Governor to refuse assent to legislation? The short answer is “no”. Article 143 relates to the Supreme Court’s “advisory” jurisdiction. An advisory cannot overturn a verdict that has attained finality.
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1 month ago | 
epw.in | Alok Prasanna Kumar
A decade after Bengaluru’s last municipal elections and five years since the term of the previous municipal corporation (Tripathi 2025), yet another law has been passed ostensibly to restructure urban governance. The lack of elections looks unlikely to be addressed any time soon. This is because the existing Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Act, 20211 is intended to be repealed and replaced by the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, 2024.
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1 month ago | 
indianexpress.com | Alok Prasanna Kumar
Story continues below this adSecond, it has exercised its powers under Article 142 to hold that the bills the TN governor did not assent to have become law. Third, it has given itself the power to issue a mandamus to the president when a bill has been referred to the president by the governor.
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2 months ago | 
epw.in | Alok Prasanna Kumar
Listen to this article Your browser does not support the audio element. Bibtex Endnote RIS Google Scholar Attempts to curb dissent through legislative and executive actions do not bode well for the future of democratic institutions.
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2 months ago | 
deccanherald.com | Alok Prasanna Kumar
At the core of democracy is the idea that every adult citizen has one vote and that vote has the same value. But population in a country is not static – people move, more children are born in some places, the death rate might increase in some places and the overall distribution of population changes.
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2 months ago | 
epw.in | Alok Prasanna Kumar
Using the number of eligible voters as a basis for delimitation rather than population might provide a politically expedient solution to the crisis of malapportionment of seats in the Lok Sabha. However, the justification for using this method must be based on constitutional principles and values rather than pragmatic grounds. Politicians in south Indian states have expressed fears that delimitation on the basis of the next census would lose representation in the Lok Sabha (Ali 2025).
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Feb 7, 2025 | 
epw.in | Alok Prasanna Kumar
The recently notified Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code and the rules made to implement it are yet another unwarranted attack on the dignity and privacy of individuals. The Uttarakhand UCC seems less about ensuring uniformity and more about controlling the choices and bodies of young people. This is a clear violation of the constitutional guarantees of privacy and dignity of the individual.
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Jan 28, 2025 | 
indianexpress.com | Alok Prasanna Kumar
Story continues below this adThe entire Uttarakhand UCC exercise seems to have been done only to show that it can be done, not that anything good can necessarily come out of it. It seems to only be about imposing Anglo-Hindu law in the interest of “uniformity” on communities that have never followed the same. The Uttarakhand UCC is of questionable constitutionality in multiple ways but I’ll highlight two crucial ones: extra-territoriality and invasion of privacy.
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Jan 17, 2025 | 
epw.in | Alok Prasanna Kumar
Persisting Questions of Constitutionality The draft Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 does not provide adequate clarity on how the DPDP board, which is responsible for the implementation of the act, is supposed to work. Given that it is the sole agency empowered and responsible to adjudicate the rights and liabilities of individuals, questions can also be raised on the constitutionality of the act and the rules in this respect.
