Section 16A of the Maharashtra Court Fees Act, 1959, added through the 2018 amendment, pertains to the refund of court fees where disputes have been settled under Section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908. But the nature of the authority competent to issue the refund remains an unresolved question before the judiciary. The problem has become stark following the decision of the Supreme Court on 19 December 2024 wherein it ruled that Lok Adalat settlement and mediation, despite being two forms of alternative dispute resolution, are distinct from each other, hence not fungible, for purposes of refunds under Section 89 CPC, and recommended the Maharashtra legislature to correct the problem of discrepancies between the treatment of the various forms of settlement under Section 89 CPC as far as refund of court fees is concerned. The thesis of this paper is that the call of the Court for legislative action overlooks an even more important prerequisite; whether the determination relating to the issuance of refund is a quasi-judicial one entailing natural justice requirements or whether it is merely a ministerial task. Using the institutional decision-making approach and the Kraipak principle, the paper examines whether the administrative categorization of Section 16A determination holds water, especially considering that a settlement entered in a court-recorded compromise itself proves the terms of settlement.
Ripe at the confluence of Indian State jurisprudential discourse lies the at once closed-presence and beleaguered occupant of the right to the individual, Privacy, now sewn to the relentless advance of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). Whether deployed by sovereign police, a municipal surveillance net, the doctrinal stitch seems to unravel further as rolls, performs, and repositions the individual profile of every domestic dweller. The surveillance apparatus burgeons beyond the premises of ‘binomial consent’ or ‘security necessity’ as magnitudes of biometric detail relax into both vendor engine and State archive, fastening the broader tableau of data-handling, earlier drawn only from handwriting and testimony, to a permanence once accorded sacred relic. The pursuit offered here entwines what the law adroitly terms ‘intrinsic spin-offs’ of the jurisprudential oeuvre since 1950, obliges the text to process every dash of precedential script upon the disguised visage, and re-examines article sovereign lies re-constructed in such casually minted permanence of facial tiles.
This paper home in on the constitutional foundations of privacy as elaborated in the landmark judgment of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) V. Union of India (2017), where the Supreme Court squarely held that the primarily on constitutional right to privacy: the Aadhaar validity case was decided separately in 2018.The ruling requires that any encroachment on privacy must be justified by a law that is just, fair and reasonable, underlining the necessity of strict safeguards when deploying intrusive technologies such as facial recognition. The absence of binding and coherent legislation has created a regulatory vacuum, further complicated by the fragmented schema of the Information Technology Act, the narrow provisions of the Aadhaar Act, and various advisory frameworks that government bodies have offered on a non-mandatory basis.
#Face Recognition#Technology#Privacy
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From a structural aspect, legal education has been a gatekeeper to the rule of law for ages, and it is expected that it would give to the future lawyers, judges, counselors, and legal scientists a deep understanding of how the executive, legislative and judicial system works (Ebenezer, 2022). This educational profession has traditionally been very conservative, retrospective and dogmatic. This is the traditional law school classroom, where students sit and take notes on a passive object, the physical object (Cella, 2011; Fornasier, 2021) and the professor in a position of total control, speaking monologically, and teaching in one direction. The fundamentals of the law, such as using the Socratic method, analyzing case law and carefully editing reporters, treatises and statutory volumes, all focused on face-to-face communication and dialectical argumentation. However, in the socioeconomic world the world has been transformed significantly with the onset of digital age and emergence of systemic technological disruptions. The legal profession is in the midst of a major transformation as society is moving through the fast-paced digitalization and industrialisation, as well as the advent of new data architectures. The practice is digital today, and digital case management systems, e-discovery algorithms, automated document assembly engines, electronic court filing architectures and others are commonplace in today's digital environment (Fornasier, 2021).
This establishes a new gap between past (analog law school) and future (hyper-digitized legal marketplace of the present day). The academic institutions are constrained to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in their teaching models due to the growing competency gap. In a broad sense, ICT education is a broad convergence of integrated telecommunications, enterprise middleware, computers, and interactive digital software that makes the creation, storage, manipulation and transmission of knowledge possible.
In the Indian context, the urgency for this transformation is particularly significant given the sheer scale of the country's legal education system. As of 2024, India has approximately 1,800 law colleges and universities enrolling around 70,000 new law graduates annually, many distributed across geographically dispersed institutions with widely differing resource levels. [1] The Bar Council of India has issued formal circulars directing all Centres of Legal Education to incorporate emerging technology subjects including artificial intelligence, cyber-security, blockchain, and electronic discovery into their curricula, reflecting an official policy recognition of the digitisation imperative in legal training. [2]
ICT has various innovations that are put into place, including learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle or Blackboard, intelligent lecture capture systems, virtual mock courts and AI-based adaptive learning systems. While the subject of the use of ICTs in legal education cannot be ignored, there are pedagogical implications which are clear: pedagogical flexibility is unprecedented; the geographical reach of legal education has been extended and realistic professional simulations are offered. But, the shift from analog instruction has severe structural issues. This paper explores systemic problems and underlying issues when attempting to use technology to instruct and educate about the law. It discusses the multiple aspects of the difference, such as pedagogical differences, regulatory barriers, data privacy issues, inequities regarding resources, and the complex ethical dilemmas of AI in the learning context. Ultimately, it can pave the way forward for law schools everywhere. The second part is on the transition from analog pedagogy to learning with ICTs. The second part is dedicated to the transformation of analog pedagogy to learning with ICTs. The use of ICT in legal education is not merely about upgrading the legal classroom, it is about epistemology or re-thinking of legal education, legal knowledge and application. In an analog world, the knowledge of law can sometimes be thought of as a set of rules and precedents in history which could be learned, or memorized. This knowledge can be passed on to the student solely by the professor. At the same time, ICTs-based teaching practices are not only de-centralizing information, but also giving rise to the possibility to build a horizontal and collaborative relationship between teacher and student, rather than a vertical and dogmatic one (Cella, 2011)
[1] 'Law School Rankings 2024: Cultivating Market-Ready Lawyers' (BW Legal World, 2024) <https://www.bwlegalworld.com/article/law-school-rankings-2024-cultivating-market-ready-lawyers-527915> accessed 1 September 2026.
[2] Press Information Bureau, 'Circular to All Universities and Centres of Legal Education by Bar Council of India to Incorporate Subjects such as Blockchain, Electronic Discovery, Cyber-Security, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Bio-Ethics in Their Curricula' (Government of India, 2024) <https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2040667> accessed 1 September 2026.
#Legal Education#Information And Communication Technology (ict)#Digital Transformation
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Surrogate advertising has surfaced as an eminent challenge in India, particularly in sectors where explicit advertising of sensitive products is restricted. By promoting substitute goods, companies announce products similar as alcohol, tobacco, and more lately, drugs. In the medicinal and AYUSH sectors, this practice has contributed to a swell of misleading remedial claims, exploiting consumer vulnerabilities. In its response, Rule 170 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 was introduced in 2018 as a targeted measure to regulate announcements of Ayurvedic, Siddha, and Unani(ASU) medicines. By requiring a Unique Identification Number by the companies before promoting such drugs, it created a preventative medium to prevent the surrogate content into the public sphere. This paper critically examines the validity of Rule 170 and its role in preventing surrogate advertising with a direct focus on public health sector. This Rule, has remained the subject of sustained controversy ever since its insertion through the Eleventh Amendment in 2018. It situates the discussion within an indigenous frame, analyzing Article 14,19,21, and 47, while drawing on crucial judicial pronouncements similar as Hamdard Dawakhana v. Union of India and the 2025 Supreme Court ruling in Indian Medical Association v. Union of India which upheld the deletion of the said Rule.
The study then infers that the future of drug advertising regulation in India lies in building a unified and comprehensive framework that can effectively counter surrogate practices across all medical systems while maintaining an environment conducive to fair competition and legitimate trade.
#Surrogate Advertising#Rule 170#Ayush Medicines
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Sampling is one of the fundamental component of the research methodology. It guides the researcher to bridge the gap between theory and empirical populations. It enables researchers to draw conclusions backed by empirical evidence by examining the representative subset of the population. When a researcher executes his research, it is impractical to study an entire population depending on the research objectives, because of many reasons may it be lack of time, resources or a large population, therefore the researcher has to find an appropriate sample size to study the characteristics of the whole population. This paper provides a comprehensive explanation and description of sampling, covering its core concepts, significance both in qualitative and quantitative research, classifications and best practices of sampling in research. This article further discusses the criteria for selecting an appropriate sampling method which follow the research objectives, population, characteristics, sample size, and available resources. It is a quite essential step in research as this stage will determine the conclusion after examination and evaluation of the data collected through sampling, thereby contributing a robust, valid and reliable research study.