The Leaflet's podcast with P.D.T. Achary unravels the legal implications of Maharashtra case before the Supreme Court.

This podcast was recorded on July 20th, 2022.

Which is the original Shiv Sena?

On the second episode of The Leaflet podcast series, our host Gursimran Kaur Bakshi interacts with Supreme Court’s Advocate-on-Record, Prashant Padmanabhan. The episode has our guest Padmanabhan decoding how and when obscenity can become an offence under Indian law, in the light of the controversy surrounding actor Ranveer Singh posting his nude photos on the social media platforms Instagram and Twitter on July 22.  

During the conversation, Padmanabhan throws light on concepts such as constitutional morality, Hicklin Test, and the community standard test.  He also discusses with Bakshi why criminal provisions should be given restrictive meaning and read down, how the Delhi High Court decided the case in favour of M.F.Hussain when the eminent artist was dragged to various courts for his nude paintings of Hindu goddesses, and how the Supreme Court decided similar cases in recent years. 

The podcast was recorded on July 30, 2022.

Why is Ranveer Singh’s nude photo not obscene?

On the third episode of The Leaflet podcast series, our host Gursimran Kaur Bakshi interacts with author and journalist, Ziya Us Salam. The episode has our guest Salam explaining  how Talaq-E-Hasan mode of divorce, in which talaq is pronounced with an interval of at least one month or one menstrual cycle, can withstand legal scrutiny.

Why Talaq-E-Hasan can withstand legal scrutiny?

Why Gujarat Government's remission order in Bilkis Bano case militates against international law?

In this first episode of The Leaflet's  Conversations - a special weekend podcast in which we examine the legal issues which made headlines in the preceding week with a special guest - The Leaflet's Editor, V.Venkatesan speaks to Prashant Padmanabhan, an Advocate on Record in the Supreme Court of India, and a perceptive observer of the contemporary legal controversies to throw light on some of the issues concerning the Supreme Court.   

While Padmanabhan agrees with the former CJI, Ramana on the polyvocal nature of Indian Supreme Court, he feels that the remedy lies in the formation of a permanent Constitution bench.  Padmanabhan then supports CJI U.U.Lalit's strategy of drawing specific timelines for the Constitution benches on several cases pending before the Supreme Court.  

He further explains why the Supreme Court's grant of bail to journalist Siddique Kappan - after two years of his incarceration - sends a significant message to the powers-that-be that freedom of expression should be valued at all costs. 

Padmanabhan also explains the context in which the Supreme Court has intervened in the Kerala dog menace case, and the petition seeking uniform law on key issues.  

The podcast starts with a brief summary of some of the other legal news as reported by the newspapers in the preceding week by The Leaflet's staff writer, Sarah Thanawala.

Is Ex-CJI N.V.Ramana's justification for a polyvocal Supreme Court valid?

In this podcast, The Leaflet’s team continues to review the week’s legal news: the stories that made the headlines and also those you may have missed. 

In this episode, we look at the merits of ‘listing’ reform which the Chief Justice of India, U.U. Lalit has undertaken in the Supreme Court to reduce pendency of cases and seek to answer the question whether it will yield results.  

We also look at the focus of the Supreme Court Constitution bench’s hearing of the Economically Weaker Sections’ (EWS) reservations case last week and ask whether the EWS quota can withstand legal scrutiny.   

And we consider whether the hearing of the challenges to the ban on hijab in Karnataka by a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court will ultimately result in the case being referred to a Constitution bench. 

The podcast starts with a brief summary of some of the other legal news as reported by the newspapers in the preceding week by The Leaflet’s staff writer, Sarah Thanawala.

Produced by The Leaflet’s team comprising V.Venkatesan, Gursimran Bakshi, and Sarah Thanawala.

The conversation was recorded on September 18, 2022.

What CJI U.U.Lalit’s reform of the listing system in the SC could mean for its functioning?

On the fifth episode of The Leaflet's podcast series, our host Gursimran Kaur Bakshi interacts with legal researcher and author, Saumya Saxena on her newly launched book, titled ‘Divorce and Democracy: A History of Personal Law in Post-Independence India’ published by the Cambridge University Press. 

Saumya is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge and a Postdoctoral Associate at Jesus College, Cambridge. She is a legal historian interested in family law, religion, and gender politics in India. She writes on women’s movements, secularism, and law in late-20th and 21st century South Asia.

In the podcast, Saumya explains how she was able to deal with the idea of divorce in a non-judgmental manner by bringing different actors of the state and institutions to the forefront. The author by mapping the trajectories of marriage and divorce laws of Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities in postcolonial India, explores the dynamic interplay between law, religion, family, minority rights and gender in Indian politics. 

Saumya recognises that personal laws were premised on the ostentatious divide between the public and private spheres. She answers why the state has a political desire to regulate the intimate sphere of the family. She also goes on to explore the relationship between divorce and secularism, which according to her is pertinent to understand the role of electoral politics in shaping the different interpretations of personal law and the debate around the Uniform Civil Code in postcolonial India.

The podcast was recorded on September 9, 2022.

Divorce and Democracy: A History of Personal Law in Post-Independence India

In this podcast, The Leaflet’s team continues to review the week’s legal news: the stories that made the headlines and also those you may have missed.

In this episode, we look at the significance of the Supreme Court’s decision to livestream the proceedings of the Constitution benches from September 27.  We ask why the Court took so long to accept this rather simple demand from the public, and complement senior advocate, and The Leaflet’s co-founder, Indira Jaising for nudging the Court to take this momentous decision at this juncture.    We also discuss how the Court is going to balance the requirements of transparency with the right to privacy of the litigants, and whether the Court will gradually extend this feature to non-Constitution bench matters as well in the coming days.  

We also examine another momentous decision of the Supreme Court in referring the suo motu case being heard by a three-judge bench on framing appropriate sentencing guidelines in death penalty cases to a Constitution bench.  

Professor Anup Surendranath, Executive director of Project 39A (a criminal justice programme at the National Law University, Delhi, gave us his perspective on why the decision is momentous, as it is the first time the Supreme Court will be reviewing core issues in death penalty juriprudence in such great detail after the landmark decision in Bachan Singh (1980), which held the death penalty constitutional, though other Constitution benches in Mithu versus State of Punjab (1983),and  Mohd. Arif (2014), considered other aspects such as mandatory death sentencing and open court hearing in review cases respectively. 

The bench is expected to go beyond the question of same day sentencing, and lay down comprehensive guidelines on evaluating the reformative potential of  a convict, and assessing the mitigating circumstances in favour of a convict while sentencing, according to our guests, Thulasi K Raj and Prashant Padmanabhan. 

The podcast starts with a brief discussion on the other legal news, as reported by the newspapers in the preceding week.

The conversation was recorded on  September 25, 2022.

Produced by The Leaflet’s team comprising its Editor, V.Venkatesan, staff writer, Gursimran Kaur Bakshi, Sarah Thanawala and intern, Sonali Ahuja.

Why is SC's decision to refer the death penalty sentencing case to a Constitution bench momentous?

On the sixth episode of The Leaflet’s podcast series, our host Sarah Thanawala interacts with Rohin Bhatt, a queer lawyer and a queer rights activist. He is currently a Master of Bioethics candidate at Harvard Medical School. He writes on a wide range of topics including queerness, reproductive rights, bioethics constitutional law, and the effects that fascism has on human rights.

In this episode, Bhatt delves into the Supreme Court Judgment in the case of X versus The Principal Secretary Health and Family Department, Govt of Delhi, where the Court held that unmarried and single women, who face a change in their material circumstances, will be able to access abortion between 20 and 24 weeks of pregnancy. 

Bhatt explains the provisions under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 (‘MTP’ Act), and the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Rules, 2003 that were at the centre of the issue in the Court’s expansive interpretation of the abortion law in India. Besides the law, he explains the social barriers to accessing safe and legal abortion, including the social stigma and the fear of the registered medical practitioners, that the Court took due notice of in its judgment. 

Bhatt highlights the various ways in which the judgment has given an expansive interpretation and proved to be a progressive one, particularly on account of its wide interpretation of the term ‘women’, by including 'persons other than cis-gender women', and the inclusion of marital rape within the meaning of 'rape' for the purposes of the MTP Act. He also elaborates on the Court’s recognition of the barrier of mandatory reporting under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 in accessing safe abortion by young adults. 

Bhatt explains that the Court primarily relied upon Article 21 of the Constitution to recognise the right to reproductive autonomy, right to dignity, and right to privacy of unmarried and single women to access abortion.

Lastly, Bhatt emphasises that although the obstacles including criminalisation of abortion under the Indian Penal Code, privatisation of hospitals, lack of audits or training for medical education, and a social stigma exist in the way of the expansive interpretation given by the court to see the light of the day, the judgment is the first step in realising the right of women to abortion.

Why is the Supreme Court's recent judgment on abortion hailed as progressive?

Former Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising and senior advocate Mohan V. Katarki discuss the legal implications of Rahul Gandhi's conviction and disqualification from Lok Sabha.

What are the options available to Rahul Gandhi after his disqualification from the Parliament?

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Why is the Supreme Court's recent judgment on abortion hailed as progressive?

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