List of practice Questions

An Ordinance which is promulgated by the Governor has (as clause 2 of Article 213 provides) the same force and effect as an Act of the legislature of the State assented to by the Governor. However - and this is a matter of crucial importance – clause 2 goes on to stipulate in the same vein significant constitutional conditions. These conditions have to be fulfilled before the ‘force and effect’ fiction comes into being. These conditions are prefaced by the expression “but every such Ordinance” which means that the constitutional fiction is subject to what is stipulated in sub-clauses (a) and (b). Sub-clause (a) provides that the Ordinance “shall be laid before the legislative assembly of the state” or before both the Houses in the case of a bi-cameral legislature. Is the requirement of laying an Ordinance before the state legislature mandatory? There can be no manner of doubt that it is. The expression “shall be laid” is a positive mandate which brooks no exceptions. That the word ‘shall’ in sub-clause (a) of clause 2 of Article 213 is mandatory, emerges from reading the provision in its entirety. As we have noted earlier, an Ordinance can be promulgated only when the legislature is not in session. Upon the completion of six weeks of the reassembling of the legislature, an Ordinance “shall cease to operate”.
Article 213(2)(a) postulates that an ordinance would cease to operate upon the expiry of a period of six weeks of the reassembly of the legislature. The Oxford English dictionary defines the expression “cease” as : “to stop, give over, discontinue, desist; to come to the end.” P Ramanatha Aiyar’s, The Major Law Lexicon defines the expression “cease” to mean “discontinue or put an end to”. Justice C K Thakker’s Encyclopaedic Law Lexicon defines the word “cease” as meaning: “to put an end to; to stop, to terminate or to discontinue”. The expression has been defined in similar terms in Black’s Law Dictionary.
The expression “cease to operate” in Article 213(2)(a) is attracted in two situations. The first is where a period of six weeks has expired since the reassembling of the legislature. The second situation is where a resolution has been passed by the legislature disapproving of an ordinance. Apart from these two situations that are contemplated by sub-clause (a), sub-clause (b) contemplates that an ordinance may be withdrawn at any time by the Governor. Upon its withdrawal the ordinance would cease to operate as well.
[Extracts from the judgment of majority judgment in Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar, Civil Appeal No. 5875 of 1994, decided on January 2, 2017 hereafter ‘KK Singh’]

Until 2017, India did not have a codified law to order internet shut downs. A general power was vested in District Magistrates in this regard. The Magistrate could issue an order ordering a shut down if a ‘speedy remedy’ (extending to internet shut down) is desirable for ‘immediate prevention’ of an event. The Magistrate had to be satisfied that the order is ‘likely to prevent or tends to prevent obstruction, annoyance or injury to human life, health or safety, or a disturbance of public tranquillity’. The Magistrate’s order cannot be for longer than two months.
In 2017, new rules to order internet shut downs were introduced taking the power away from the Magistrate. These rules — the Temporary Suspension Rules — state that internet shut downs can now only be ordered by the Home Secretary of the Union or State Governments. Only in “unavoidable circumstances” can the passing of orders be delegated to someone lower than the rank of a Joint Secretary to the Government of India. And even in this case, the official must be authorised by the Centre or State Home Secretary. Shut downs can be ordered where ‘necessary’ or ‘unavoidable’ during a ‘public emergency’ or in the ‘interest of public safety’. Shut down orders must necessarily detail the reasons to shut down the internet. The orders must also be sent to a review committee under the state or central government within 24 hours. The committee must then review them within five working days. The rules state that apart from the Chief Secretary and Legal Secretary, the committee can comprise a secretary other than the home secretary.
In January 2020 the Supreme Court passed its judgement in the case of Anuradha Bhasin. The judgement in this case explicitly recognised two things: that the freedom to access information is a fundamental right under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India (which protects the freedom of speech and expression); and that the freedom to conduct your trade, profession or business over the internet is also a fundamental right under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India (which protects the freedom to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business). Every time the internet is suspended, it is quite obvious that it is a violation of these rights. These rights can only be curtailed in the interest of the ‘sovereignty and security of the state, integrity of the nation, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of an offence’. The Supreme Court’s judgement in Anuradha Bhasin’s case had also underlined that shut down orders must clearly provide reasons for the shut down and they must be publicly available.
[Extracted with edits and revisions from “In India, are internet shut downs in accordance with law? Not always”, by Diksha Munjal, News Laundry]

Twitter’s lawyer on October 27, said before the Karnataka High Court that Union government orders to block certain Twitter handles and posts must contain reasons for the same that can be communicated to users of the microblogging site. He said this applies to all blocking orders sent to social media platforms. The lawyer representing Twitter said that reasons for the blocking order must be provided to users so they can determine whether or not they want to challenge the orders.
Challenging the blocking orders, Twitter’s July 5 petition contended that several blocking orders “demonstrate excessive use of powers and are disproportionate”. Such orders can only be issued by the Union government and not the state governments, he said, which increases the danger of such abuse. Twitter also claimed that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had sent it a letter threatening consequences for failing to comply with the blocking orders, such as criminal proceedings against the company’s chief compliance officer and the stripping away of Twitter’s safe harbour immunity, otherwise available to social media platforms under Section 79(1) of the Information Technology Act (the “IT Act”). Note that the Government has the power to strip away such safe harbour immunity under the IT Act. Further, in a previous hearing, Twitter’s lawyer said that the company was asked to block entire accounts, although Section 69A of the IT Act does not permit blocking of the whole account. It only permits the blocking of information, or a particular tweet or post. It argued that the Union government’s direction to block whole accounts will affect its business, adding that several prominent persons have their accounts on the platform. 
[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from “ ‘Government Must Provide Reasons for Blocking User Accounts,’ Twitter Tells Karnataka HC”, The Wire]

Assume that the statements in the passages are the applicable law.
Quashing a case of cruelty that was filed against a man by his wife, the Bombay High Court said that if a married lady is asked to do household work for the family, it cannot be said that she is treated “like a maid servant”. The Court was hearing an application by the husband and his parents seeking that proceedings against them are quashed. A First Information Report (“FIR”) was filed against the trio in September 2020, around nine months after the marriage, alleging that they hounded the woman for money to purchase a car, harassed her mentally and physically and treated her like a maid servant. Examining the evidence, the Court found that there was no merit to the woman’s allegations. The Court said that though the FIR says that she was treated properly for about a month and then “like a maid servant”, there are no details of what this meant. The Court added: “If a married lady is asked to do household work for the purpose of the family, it cannot be said that it is like a maid servant.” The Court held that the mere use of the word harassment “mentally and physically” in the FIR is not sufficient to constitute an offence Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (“IPC”), which punishes the husband, or a relative of the husband of a woman who subjects her to cruelty in any way. It is interesting to note that Section 498A of the IPC also provides that if a married woman is actually treated like a ‘maid servant’, it would be an offence under that Section.
[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from “If Wife Is Asked To Do Household Work, Does Not Mean She Is Treated Like Maid: Bombay HC”, The Wire]

The Supreme Court of India observed that, while appreciating the existence of the right to peaceful protest against a legislation ……., we have to make it unequivocally clear that public ways and public spaces cannot be occupied in such a manner and that too indefinitely. Democracy and dissent go hand in hand, but then the demonstrations expressing dissent must be in designated places alone. The present case was not even one of protests taking place in an undesignated area but was a blockage of a public way which caused grave inconvenience to commuters. We cannot accept the plea of the applicants that an indeterminable number of people can assemble whenever they choose to protest.

Common intention implies a pre-arranged plan and acting in concert pursuant to the plan. Common intention comes into being prior to the commission of the act, which need not be a long gap. To bring common intention into effect a pre-concert is not necessarily be proved, but it may well develop on the spot as between a number of persons and could be inferred from facts and circumstances of each case. For example A and B caught hold of C where only B stabbed C with a knife but A is also liable for murder as there was a pre concerted action. In the case Pandurang v. State of Hyderabad, Supreme court emphasized on this point that prior concert need not be something always very much prior to the incident, but could well be something that may develop on the spot, on the spur of the moment.
Common Intention and Similar Intention
Common intention does not mean similar intention of several persons. To constitute common intention it is necessary that the intention of each one of them be known to the rest of them and shared by them. In the case of Dukhmochan Pandey v. State of Bihar, the Supreme Court, held that: “Common intention which developed at the spur of the moment is different from the similar intention actuated a number of person at the same time….the distinction between a common intention and similar intention may be fine, but is nonetheless a real one and if overlooked, may lead to miscarriage of justice….” The mere presence of accused together is not sufficient to hold that they shared the common intention to commit the offence in question. It is necessary that the intention of each one of 'several persons‘ be known to each other for constituting common intention.

The issue of Obscenity has vexed the Courts in India and abroad for a long time now. The intriguing question has always been the same, i.e., what should be the standards to qualify something as obscene in the eyes of law? In the United Kingdom, way back in 1868, the Court laid down the Hicklin test in Regina v. Hicklin (1868 L.R. 2 Q.B. 360), and held that: “The test of Obscenity is whether the tendency of the matter charged as Obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.” Hicklin test postulated that a publication has to be judged for obscenity based on isolated passages of a work considered out of context and judged by their apparent influence on most susceptible readers, such as children or weak minded adults. However, this test was later rejected by most of the jurisdictions. There were many judgments where it was stipulated by the Indian Courts that, Obscenity has to be judged in the context of contemporary social mores, current socio-moral attitude of the community and the prevalent norms of acceptability/ susceptibility of the community, in relation to matters in issue. [For example, in Ranjit D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra AIR 1965 SC 881; Chandrakant Kalyandas Kakodar v. State of Maharashtra 1969 (2) SCC 687 etc.] These judgements indicated that the concept of Obscenity would change with the passage of time and what might have been “obscene” at one point of time would not be considered as obscene at a later period. This came to be known as “Community Standards Test”. In Bobby Art International & Ors. v. Om Pal Singh Hoon (1996) 4 SCC 1, the Court, upholding the Community standards test held that, complete message and context of the objectionable scene/firm/picture etc., needs to be examined in order to find out whether the alleged material is obscene or not.