Nine Judges Rework the 'Industry' Test — Prospectively Only

Welcome to this week’s issue of the Indian Legal Brief (ILB). Here are the judgments, orders, regulatory changes, and developments that matter to your practice — without the noise.

A week of heavy machinery. A nine-judge bench answered a labour-law reference that had waited twenty-one years — and did it without disturbing a single pending case. The Chief Justice’s bench rewrote the entry gate to the subordinate judiciary, Justices Pardiwala and Chandran declared an entire penal statute stillborn, and the Court spent Monday and Tuesday fencing the prosecution of politics: black-money directions one day, a signal that the student-protest FIRs will be quashed the next. Justice Sanjay Karol delivered a stack of judgments on his way out the door and retired on Saturday. Here’s what happened.

Supreme Court Highlights

Labour: Nine Judges Refine the ‘Industry’ Test, but Spare Every Pending Case

Bench: Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices B.V. Nagarathna, P.S. Narasimha, Dipankar Datta, Ujjal Bhuyan, Satish Chandra Sharma, Joymalya Bagchi, Alok Aradhe and Vipul M. Pancholi — August 20, 2026

For forty-eight years, the meaning of “industry” in Section 2(j) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 has been governed by the seven-judge decision in Bangalore Water Supply & Sewerage Board v. A. Rajappa (1978) and its famous triple test — systematic activity, organised through employer-employee cooperation, for the production or distribution of goods and services satisfying human wants. A five-judge bench doubted that expansive reading in Jai Bir Singh in 2005 and referred it onward; the reference then sat for two decades. This week, nine judges finally answered it — in State of U.P. v. Jai Bir Singh, 2026 INSC 897.

By a 5:4 majority, the Court held that parts of the triple test require refinement, with greater weight to an establishment’s commercial character. Chief Justice Surya Kant wrote for himself and Justices Sharma, Aradhe and Pancholi, with Justice Narasimha concurring separately in the result; Justices Nagarathna, Datta (for himself and Justice Bhuyan) and Bagchi wrote against reopening the settled formulation, Justice Bagchi warning that a narrowed definition would strike “most heavily at those on the lowest rungs of public employment”.

“We have felt that some of these constituent elements could have been articulated differently so as to better reflect the scope and contours of Section 2(j).”

What the majority refused to do is as important as what it did. The reformulated test operates only prospectively: every dispute pending under the repealed 1947 Act continues to be decided on the 1978 triple test, and concluded cases are undisturbed. And the definition of “industry” in Section 2(p) of the Industrial Relations Code — which replaces the 1947 Act — must, the Court held, be construed entirely on its own text and scheme, anchored neither to Bangalore Water Supply nor to the fresh formulation.

Why it matters: Every dispute pending under the repealed Industrial Disputes Act stays governed by the 1978 test — no reopening, no churn in the labour courts. The real battlefield moves to the Industrial Relations Code, which must now be read on its own terms, unanchored to half a century of case law on either side.

---

Judiciary: Three-Year Practice Rule for Civil Judges Cut to One Year

Bench: Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Augustine George Masih; Justice K. Vinod Chandran dissenting — August 21, 2026

The judgment reserved on 28 July arrived on Friday, and it rewrites the most contested recruitment rule in the subordinate judiciary. In Bhumika Trust v. Union of India, 2026 INSC 904, a 2:1 majority modified the May 2025 All India Judges Association ruling that had restored a mandatory three years’ Bar practice for Civil Judge (Junior Division) recruitment — cutting the requirement to one year of practice, verified by a Certificate of Practice.

The transition is generous: the prior-practice requirement is waived altogether for judicial service examinations notified between 25 May 2025 and 31 March 2027, so fresh law graduates can still apply. Selected candidates join as Trainee Judicial Officers and must complete one year of intensive training at the State Judicial Academy followed by a structured one-year clerkship — six months with a District Judge, six months with a High Court judge — drawing half the remuneration of a Judicial Magistrate First Class in the interim. From 1 April 2027, the one-year practice certificate becomes the gating document. The scheme runs for five years, then falls for review on empirical data. The majority reasoned that three years of conventional practice is not the sole path to courtroom familiarity, and that “the requirement of experience must bear a reasonable relationship with the object which it sought to achieve.”

“Forensic and analytical skills of an adjudicator are better learnt in the profession by observing what happens in the Courts.”

That is Justice K. Vinod Chandran, dissenting — the courtroom, he wrote, is “the most profound of all Classrooms”, and no training schedule can substitute for it.

Why it matters: Every State’s judicial service calendar changes this week. Exams notified before 31 March 2027 are open to fresh graduates; recruitment rules, academy capacity and clerkship frameworks must be rebuilt around the new two-year post-selection pipeline. States that were holding recruitment pending this verdict can now notify.

---

Criminal: The UP Gangsters Act Is ‘Stillborn’ — Punishment Without an Offence

Bench: Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran — August 20, 2026

Two practising advocates, Shiv Pratap Singh and Himanshu Srivastava, were booked under the UP Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986 in February 2024, on the back of a Bar association election dispute in Fatehgarh. In Shiv Pratap Singh alias Chinu v. State of U.P., 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 836, the Supreme Court quashed the proceedings — and went much further.

The Act, the Court held, is “stillborn”: it defines “gang” and “gangster” and prescribes punishment, but never creates a distinct offence. Everything the definitions describe is already punishable under the IPC and other statutes, and the executive-prepared “gang chart” cannot supply what the legislature omitted — fixing criminal liability on a status rather than an act offends the principle of legality and Article 20(1). Creating offences, the bench observed, is an exclusively legislative function. The Court did not strike the Act down as unconstitutional; it held that, as drafted, there is simply no offence in it to prosecute. Independent IPC prosecutions continue untouched.

The same statute took a second hit this week. In Keshvendra Singh v. Shankar Singh, 2026 INSC 866 (Justices K.V. Viswanathan and Arun Palli, August 18), the Court held that Section 12 — which gives Gangsters Act trials “precedence” — does not freeze an accused’s other trials: it matters only where hearing dates actually clash. The Allahabad High Court had kept a murder trial in abeyance pending the accused’s Gangsters Act case; the Supreme Court called the right to speedy trial the victim’s right too, and noted that on its interim direction the murder trial had since concluded in conviction.

Why it matters: Thousands of pending Gangsters Act prosecutions in UP rest on gang charts, and every one of them is now open to a quashing petition on the “stillborn” holding — while the Section 12 ruling ends a routine stalling tactic. Expect the State to seek review or a legislative cure; until then, the Act is a shell.

---

Protest: Court Signals It Will Quash Student-Protest FIRs, Names a Subhash Reddy Panel

Bench: Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana — August 18, 2026

The detailed hearing on the FIRs from this summer’s nationwide student protests — flagged in this journal since the Court’s 3 August order leaving States “at liberty” to withdraw them — produced a sharp escalation. The bench signalled that it intends to quash the FIRs against student protesters itself, rather than leave withdrawal to State discretion. “It’s a question of life and future of innocent students,” the Chief Justice observed, adding that criminality “has to be seen with the object and purpose for which students gathered there.” The Solicitor General told the Court that around 2,873 persons facing grave charges — murder, rape, abduction — would stand excluded from any relief.

By order of the same day, published Thursday, the Court constituted a five-member High-Powered Expert Committee headed by former Supreme Court judge R. Subhash Reddy, with former Punjab & Haryana Chief Justice Ravi Shankar Jha, former Delhi High Court judge Shalinder Kaur, former CBI Director Rishi Kumar Shukla and former Meghalaya DGP L.R. Bishnoi. Its remit runs to alleged police excesses, protester violence, and the harassment allegations arising from the police action.

Why it matters: A quashing by the Court itself — rather than State-by-State withdrawal — would be a single nationwide disposal of hundreds of FIRs, with the “serious antecedents” carve-out as the remaining battleground. Counsel for arrested students should track the committee’s terms: its findings on police excesses will feed compensation and disciplinary claims well after the FIRs are gone.

---

Arbitration: Pre-Deposit Clauses Head to a Larger Bench, S.K. Jain Doubted

Bench: Justices Manoj Misra and Manmohan — August 18, 2026

A Gurugram storm-water drainage contract — ₹5.14 crore, later cut to ₹2.40 crore — carried a familiar sting: the contractor alone had to deposit 10 per cent of any claim above ₹1 lakh as security before invoking arbitration. In M/s Santosh Associate Pvt. Ltd. v. HSIIDC, 2026 INSC 872, the Supreme Court declined to apply the three-judge ruling in S.K. Jain v. State of Haryana (2009) that upheld such clauses, and asked the Chief Justice to constitute a larger bench to decide whether it remains good law.

The reference questions go to the root of one-sided government contracting: whether contractor-only pre-deposit conditions violate the equal-treatment mandate of Section 18 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act; whether they defeat the statute’s pro-arbitration policy; and whether they are arbitrary under Article 14 or hit by Section 28 of the Contract Act as rendering the right to sue illusory. The bench noted the contrary current in ICOMM Tele (2019), which struck down a similar clause as unconscionable — the two lines have coexisted uneasily for years.

Why it matters: Pre-deposit clauses are boilerplate in State PSU and infrastructure contracts, and every arbitration invoked under one is now shadowed by the reference. Contractors should invoke and reserve rather than wait — limitation will not pause for the larger bench — and government counsel should expect interim challenges to deposit demands citing this order.

---

Health: Police Cannot Register FIRs or Investigate PC-PNDT Offences

Bench: Justices Sanjay Karol and N. Kotiswar Singh — August 20, 2026

In State of U.P. v. Dr. Brij Pal Singh, 2026 INSC 901, the Supreme Court held that offences under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 cannot travel the ordinary FIR–police–chargesheet route merely because they are cognizable and non-bailable. The Act builds its own enforcement machinery: the Appropriate Authority investigates, and a Magistrate may take cognizance only on its complaint under Section 28 — never on a police chargesheet.

The police are not shut out entirely. Justice Kotiswar Singh, in a separate concurrence, mapped their supplementary role: protection, tracing absconding accused, forensic and digital assistance, scene preservation — when the Appropriate Authority calls them in. What they cannot do is commence an independent investigation.

Why it matters: Every pending PC-PNDT prosecution founded on a police FIR or chargesheet is now vulnerable to quashing, and defence counsel will move within days. For States, the ruling is an enforcement audit: sex-selection cases survive only if Appropriate Authorities are staffed, trained and actually filing Section 28 complaints.

---

Education: Statutory Pay Scales Are Enforceable by Writ Against Private Unaided Schools

Bench: Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi — August 18, 2026

Teachers of private unaided schools in Maharashtra sued for the pay scales prescribed under the Maharashtra Employees of Private Schools (Conditions of Service) Regulation Act, 1977 and its 1981 Rules; the management’s answer was the classic one — no State aid, no writ. In Siyaram Education Society v. Chhaya d/o Baliram Dhave, 2026 INSC 871, the Supreme Court closed that escape route.

“If there is a statutory mandate to a private unaided educational institution to pay the teaching staff salary at a particular rate, a writ of mandamus would lie even against an unaided private educational institution to fulfil its statutory obligation.”

Imparting education under statutory recognition, the Court reasoned, is akin to performing a public duty, and where teachers’ pay rights flow from a statute, their enforcement carries a public element sufficient to attract Article 226 — distinguishing such claims from purely private contractual disputes. The Court also held that the State’s failure to lay the amended 2016 pay rules before the legislature was a curable defect that did not affect their validity from notification.

Why it matters: Private-school teachers across the country can now go straight to the High Court for statutory scales instead of grinding through civil suits — and school managements lose the maintainability objection that has ended most of these cases at the threshold. The line the Court drew matters, though: the writ enforces statutory pay mandates, not contractual disputes.

---

Criminal Practice: A §156(3) Rejection Does Not Bar a Later FIR

Bench: Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and N.V. Anjaria — August 19, 2026

When a Magistrate declines to order investigation on a Section 156(3) CrPC application, can the police still register an FIR on the same allegations? In Pramod Kumar Shukla v. State of U.P., 2026 INSC 887, the Supreme Court said yes: the police’s duty to register an FIR on information disclosing a cognizable offence flows directly from Sections 154 and 156, and is independent of the fate of the Magistrate-route application.

“The rejection of an application under Section 156(3) of the Cr.PC cannot curtail or extinguish the independent statutory obligation cast upon the Police under Section 154 of the Cr.PC.”

A Section 156(3) rejection, the Court held, is a threshold order that involves no adjudication on merits — it operates neither as res judicata nor as a bar to subsequent proceedings.

Why it matters: Complainants who lost before the Magistrate can still get the thana to register; and a standard quashing argument — that the FIR is an abuse because a Magistrate already refused — is gone. The same logic will govern Section 175(3) BNSS practice, where the identical two-track structure exists.

---

Elections: Withdrawing a Candidate’s Prosecution Now Needs High Court Approval

Bench: Justices Sanjay Karol and N. Kotiswar Singh — August 17, 2026

Unaccounted cash in elections “compromises democracy, rule of law and the election process itself”, the Supreme Court held in State of Karnataka v. Prathik Parasrampuria, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1587, and it backed the observation with nationwide directions. Election-period seizures of cash and assets must be reported within 24 hours to the District Magistrate or competent court, with reasons connecting them to electoral offences; investigations in election-related FIRs are to conclude within a year, with reasons recorded for any overrun; nodal officers must send quarterly status reports to the ECI; and surveillance teams must forward cash-over-₹10-lakh detections to the income-tax authorities.

The structural teeth are in two directions. High Courts may designate courts for prompt trial of cases against candidates, MPs and MLAs. And the withdrawal of a prosecution against a candidate now requires the concerned High Court’s approval — it cannot follow merely from a change of government.

“The choice exercised by the people once influenced by external factors is no longer a choice of their own.”

Compliance reports from the ECI and the States fall due by 18 November 2026.

Why it matters: The withdrawal direction is the important one: the routine post-election amnesty — a new government dropping cases against its own — now runs through the High Court, in every State. Prosecutors, public law practitioners and election counsel should diary the November compliance date; the follow-on litigation will define how hard these directions bite.

---

Environment: Art of Living Not Liable for Yamuna Damage — Causation Comes First

Bench: Justices Satish Chandra Sharma and N. Kotiswar Singh — August 22, 2026

The nine-year fight over the March 2016 World Culture Festival on the Yamuna floodplain ended on Saturday. In Vyakti Vikas Kendra India v. Manoj Misra, 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 847, the Supreme Court set aside the NGT’s 2017 order holding the Art of Living Foundation liable for damage to the floodplain, and directed the DDA to refund the ₹5 crore compensation deposited.

Liability for environmental damage, the Court held, requires a demonstrated causal connection between the activity and the harm — and none was established against the Foundation. The judgment is no absolution of the event’s siting: the Court criticised the DDA’s own conduct in permitting a mega-event on an ecologically sensitive floodplain it was bound to protect, and directed that restoration work continue.

Why it matters: The causation holding raises the evidentiary bar in every NGT compensation case — expert reports that assume harm from the fact of activity will no longer carry a liability finding. Read with this month’s Amravati Municipal Corporation principles on proportionate, reasoned environmental compensation, the era of impressionistic tribunal awards is closing from both ends.

Other Notable SC Orders This Week

• ‘No insurance, no fuel’ pilot ordered (August 19) — Reviewing compliance with its Thungala Dhana Laxmi motor-insurance overhaul, the bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Prashant Kumar Mishra directed the Centre to actually implement the fuel-insurance linkage pilot, suggesting it start in Delhi with ANPR cameras at petrol pumps.
• ED v. Mamata Banerjee (August 18) — Hearing the ED’s Article 32 plea over the obstruction of its I-PAC raid, Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and N.V. Anjaria floated transferring the probe to the CBI — “You can refer to CBI, we will enable you” — and will decide maintainability and merits together; hearing resumes 2 September.
• Tejpal reaches the Supreme Court (August 20–21) — Tarun Tejpal filed an SLP against the Bombay High Court’s 6 August conviction and ten-year sentence, and the Goa government cross-moved seeking enhancement to life imprisonment; the High Court has extended his surrender window to four weeks.
• Insurance: no risk without advance premium (August 18) — Justices Sanjay Karol and N. Kotiswar Singh held that Section 64VB of the Insurance Act is a statutory embargo: a marine cargo turnover policy already exhausted at the time of a fire could not be retrospectively enhanced by a premium paid after the loss; the insurer’s ₹22-crore liability was set aside (New India Assurance v. Louis Dreyfus Commodities, 2026 INSC 876).
• SC/ST Act: closed-room abuse is not ‘public view’ (August 20) — Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta quashed Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) proceedings against a school manager because the alleged caste insults were hurled inside an enclosed room with no member of the public to see or hear them; the IPC case continues (2026 INSC 895).
• Mother’s income no ground to halve father’s maintenance (August 20) — The same bench restored ₹60,000 monthly interim maintenance for two minor daughters, holding both parents share the obligation but it “cannot be divided by arithmetic alone” — the mother’s caregiving is itself a non-monetary contribution (2026 INSC 896).
• Saradha: bail to Sudipta Sen (August 18) — Justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih granted the Saradha Group founder bail in the Assam CBI case after roughly a decade in custody in that matter, clearing his release after about thirteen years overall.
• A 105-year-old walks free (August 21) — The Chief Justice’s bench made absolute the interim bail of Rasik Chandra Mondal, convicted in 1994 for a 1988 West Bengal murder, waiving his remaining sentence.

Insolvency & Corporate

SpiceJet: An Eleventh-Hour Settlement Resets Eight Lessor Petitions

NCLT New Delhi (Mahendra Khandelwal and Anu Jagmohan Singh) — August 17–19, 2026

Eight insolvency petitions by aircraft lessors — claims exceeding ₹500 crore in aggregate — stood listed for pronouncement before a special bench of the NCLT on Monday. Overnight, SpiceJet disclosed a settlement with the lead petitioner, Aviator ML, on an initial deposit of ₹4.78 crore against an alleged default of roughly ₹58–60 crore on a leased Boeing 737. “We do not appreciate the conduct of the parties,” the bench observed, and deferred.

By Wednesday the consequences were clear. The tribunal disposed of Aviator ML’s petition as withdrawn — imposing ₹15 lakh in costs on the settling parties — and, critically, withdrew its reserved orders in the seven connected petitions, directing that they be placed before the regular bench for fresh consideration. The other lessors had opposed the settlement as a possibly mala fide device to derail all eight cases at the point of judgment.

Why it matters: A settlement with one creditor on the eve of pronouncement has reset seven others to square one — months of hearings gone. For creditors in multi-petition insolvencies, the lesson is to resist consolidation behind a single lead matter; for debtors, the ₹15 lakh costs order signals that tribunals will price eleventh-hour settlements, not just accept them.

---

IBC: Bombay HC Upholds IBBI’s 0.25% Regulatory Fee on Resolution Plans

Bombay High Court — August 21, 2026

A batch of four writ petitions challenged Regulation 31A of the IBBI’s CIRP Regulations — the 0.25 per cent regulatory fee on the realisable value under resolution plans approved on or after 1 October 2022 — on every available ground: want of statutory authority, the levy being a tax dressed as a fee, retrospectivity, proportionality and Article 14. The Bombay High Court dismissed all four.

The fee, the Court held, sits within the IBC’s framework, and a regulatory fee does not demand a strict mathematical quid pro quo — the Board’s broad-based services to CIRP stakeholders suffice to sustain it.

Why it matters: At High Court level, the 0.25 per cent is now settled as a legitimate cost of every resolution: applicants must price it into plan economics, and pending challenges elsewhere lose their anchor. An SLP is likely — but until one succeeds, the fee is payable.

Other Notable Insolvency Orders

• Reliance Entertainment Studios admitted to CIRP (August 19) — The NCLT Mumbai admitted Pen India Ltd’s Section 7 petition over a ₹11.94-crore default, holding that a film-financing “security deposit” repayable with 21 per cent interest had the commercial effect of borrowing and was financial debt — a label-agnostic warning for structured production finance.
• Homebuyers who arbitrate for refunds lose creditor status (August 19) — The NCLAT held that allottees who invoked their arbitration clause seeking refund of their investment waived their status as financial creditors under the IBC and cannot ride both remedies — an election-of-remedies trap for real-estate claimants.
• Jindal Poly Films: recall reserved (August 21) — Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Atul S. Chandurkar reserved orders on the minority shareholders’ application to recall the order that sent India’s first Section 245 class action to arbitration, after argument that an admitted class proceeding is in rem and could not be disposed of without hearing the represented shareholders.

At the Bar

Ethics: Client Confidences Survive the Falling-Out — Advocate’s Suspension Upheld

Bench: Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and Vijay Bishnoi — August 21, 2026

An actress engaged advocate Rizwan Siddhiquee in 2013–14 after an alleged attempted assault by a senior police officer; the retainer collapsed into an eleven-year, multi-forum war. The BCI’s Disciplinary Committee found the advocate guilty on three counts — issuing a legal notice without authorisation, disclosing confidential client information in a television interview that led to her identification, and derogatory public remarks — and suspended him for two years. In Rehana Khan v. Rizwan Siddhiquee, 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 846, the Supreme Court affirmed.

“An advocate cannot use information received in confidence against his client, and the fact that she has since become his adversary makes no difference.”

The duty of confidence, Justice Nath wrote for the bench, is not conditional on the client’s continued good behaviour and does not end when the relationship sours. And with a costs order aimed at both sides of the eleven-year battle — ₹5 lakh each, payable to the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee — the Court added that the justice machinery “is not a facility to settle scores”.

Why it matters: Apex-court rulings on advocates’ confidentiality are rare, and this one is absolute: public allegations by a former client do not license a public reply built on privileged material. The media-facing bar should treat every interview about a former engagement as a disciplinary exposure.

---

AIBE: Kerala HC Benches 1,157 Advocates Practising Without Certificates

Kerala High Court (Chief Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Syam Kumar V.M.) — August 19, 2026

The most aggressive judicial enforcement yet of the All India Bar Examination regime arrived from Kochi. The Kerala High Court directed the Bar Council of Kerala to publish — on its own website and the High Court’s — the names of 1,157 advocates enrolled between 2010 and 2021 who never cleared the AIBE or obtained a Certificate of Practice, and directed the High Court and district court registries not to register matters where these advocates have filed vakalath.

The order lands in the same week the Centre’s Department of Legal Affairs issued fresh Panel Counsel empanelment guidelines (OM of August 20) making AIBE clearance and a Certificate of Practice mandatory for every advocate empanelled for the Union, across courts and tribunals.

Why it matters: Over a thousand lawyers are effectively benched by publication rather than individual disciplinary process — expect immediate challenges, and expect other High Courts to borrow the template. The compliance message for chambers is blunt: an unenrolled-in-substance junior is now a filing risk, not a formality.

Other Notable at the Bar

• SCBA elections (August 18–21) — Senior Advocate Pradeep Kumar Rai was elected President of the Supreme Court Bar Association with 822 votes against Senior Advocate Anupam Lal Das’s 451, succeeding Vikas Singh; Rahul Kaushik, Pragya Baghel and Meenesh Kumar Dubey return as Vice-President, Secretary and Joint Secretary.
• Justice Sanjay Karol retires (August 22) — After three and a half years on the Court — and a final week that produced the election black-money directions, the PC-PNDT ruling and the Saradha bail — Justice Karol retired, telling his farewell that “judges are not God” and must deliver justice with humility. His departure opens one more vacancy against the enlarged strength of 38.
• Collegium fills High Court seats, not the new SC ones (August 18) — The Collegium recommended nine names for the Chhattisgarh, Gauhati and Orissa High Courts, made two additional judges permanent and extended six Calcutta additional judges — but announced no Supreme Court recommendations, leaving the four additional seats created by the Number of Judges Amendment unfilled.
• The NALSAR coda (August 17) — Chief Justice Surya Kant, addressing last week’s convocation-invitation storm, said he had never accepted NALSAR’s invitation — “the question of me attending does not arise.”

From the High Courts

Other Notable High Court Orders

• Dabholkar murder: bail for Sachin Andure (Bombay HC, August 18) — Justices Sarang Kotwal and R.R. Bhonsale suspended the life sentence of one of the two men convicted of the 2013 murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, calling the evidence “extremely weak” — eyewitnesses who identified him eight to nine years on, and loose ends in the weapon recovery.
• UAPA detention survives the BNSS transition (Delhi HC, August 18) — Justices Prathiba M. Singh and Vikas Mahajan held that the reference to Section 167 CrPC in Section 43D(2) UAPA must now be read as Section 187 BNSS, preserving the 180-day outer limit — and denied default bail at 90 days to a Red Fort blast accused.
• Tamil Thaai Vaazhthu can come first (Madras HC, August 18–19) — Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari’s bench closed a PIL over the MHA’s rendition-order notification after the Centre confirmed States retain discretion, holding nothing bars the State song being sung before the national anthem at Tamil Nadu government functions.
• Personality rights against AI (Delhi HC, August 17) — Justice Jyoti Singh granted actor Khushi Kapoor interim protection against unauthorised use of her name, image and likeness — expressly covering AI-generated content and deepfakes — with 36-hour takedown directions.
• POSH procedure, twice (Bombay HC, this week) — In two rulings the Court held that an employer cannot constitute its own appellate authority under the POSH Act, and that an Internal Committee’s threshold rejection of a complaint is appealable — both directly relevant to every employer with an ICC.

Legislative & Regulatory Watch

Assent Day: Payments (MDR), Taxation and Mining Amendments Become Law

Presidential assent — August 17, 2026

Three Acts from the Monsoon Session received Presidential assent on Monday. The Payment and Settlement Systems (Amendment) Act, 2026 is the sleeper: it creates a statutory basis for the government to notify which electronic payment modes remain MDR-free — legal room, in other words, to unwind blanket zero-MDR — with an NPCI-chaired steering committee to work out the future regime. The Finance Minister has said UPI stays free for consumers; the drafting means that is now a policy choice expressed in delegated legislation, not a statutory guarantee.

The Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2026 exempts FPIs’ interest income and capital gains on G-Secs, eases fund-manager relocation conditions, and grants long-dated exemptions for electronics manufacturing through 2040-41. The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2026 inserts Section 9D restricting State taxes and cesses on mineral rights and mineral-bearing lands — a direct legislative answer to the space the nine-judge Mineral Area Development Authority ruling opened for State taxation — and lets leaseholders add critical minerals to existing leases without additional payment.

Why it matters: For payments and fintech practices, MDR moves from budget announcements to notifiable delegated legislation — watch the first notifications. Section 9D of the MMDR amendment is a federalism fight in waiting: mineral-rich States whose taxing power the Supreme Court just confirmed will not surrender it to a Union statute quietly.

---

SEBI: First Closing-Auction Enforcement Bars a JP Morgan-Group FPI

SEBI ex-parte interim order — August 19, 2026

Three weeks after the Closing Auction Session went live, SEBI has its first manipulation case. An ex-parte interim order found prima facie manipulation of the Sensex closing auction on the BSE weekly expiry of 13 August: in the sharpest of three price spikes, Copthall Mauritius Investment Ltd — an FPI in the JP Morgan group — accounted for ₹66.58 crore of ₹66.64 crore of buy orders, placing limit orders at 3 per cent above the reference price across all Sensex constituents, to the benefit of its outstanding index-options positions. SEBI restrained Copthall and Mansi Share & Stock Broking from the securities market and impounded ₹3.68 crore in alleged unlawful gains.

The playbook is the familiar one from the Jane Street proceedings — ex-parte restraint plus impounding against an index-options-linked cash-market strategy — now applied to the auction mechanism SEBI built precisely to make closing prices harder to move.

Why it matters: When we reported the CAS going live on 3 August, the open question was where the first dispute would come from; the answer is enforcement, not contract wording. Every FPI and prop desk trading expiry needs surveillance of its own closing-auction order behaviour — aggressive limit orders into the auction window are now a flagged pattern with a named precedent.

Other Notable Regulatory Moves

• SEBI eases FPI onboarding (August 20) — Custodians may now accept digitally signed Powers of Attorney from FPIs in place of notarised or consularised documents; a companion circular opens SEBI-registered KRA records to IFSCA-regulated entities, ending duplicate KYC for GIFT City clients.
• The transmission framework is live (August 22) — SEBI’s simplified securities-transmission regime took effect: the quick-transmission route for immediate relatives, doubled simplified-documentation thresholds of ₹10 lakh physical and ₹30 lakh demat, and no mandatory probate for uncontested claims.
• CCI clears Prudential–Bharti (August 18) — The Commission approved Prudential Corporation Holdings’ acquisition of 75 per cent of Bharti Life Insurance (~₹3,500 crore), along with Tata Steel’s move to 74 per cent of TM International Logistics and General Atlantic’s additional stake in Acko.
• IBBI consultation closes Monday (August 24) — Comments close on the discussion paper requiring insolvency professionals to run due diligence for fraudulent or malicious CIRP initiation and to seek recourse under Sections 60(5) and 65.

What We’re Watching Next Week

• West Bengal SIR batch (August 25) — the Chief Justice’s bench takes up the tagged voter-roll petitions with the ECI’s data on appeals actually disposed of by the appellate tribunals.
• Two Monday deadlines (August 24) — contempt affidavits from 15 Chief Secretaries in the manual-scavenging matter fall due, and the Karnataka High Court’s gig-workers batch, now with Uber tagged, is listed the same day.
• Reserved judgments — the two-child-norm challenge (with Javed in question) and the Sabarimala nine-judge reference remain unpronounced; the Jindal Poly Films recall order was reserved Friday.
• NCDRC “quality crisis” report (~August 27) — the President’s report on consumer-commission arrears and appointments falls due before the Chief Justice’s bench.
• RBI’s mule-account SOP (~September 1) — the four-week window from the digital-arrest directions closes; ED v. Mamata Banerjee resumes on 2 September.

---

That’s all for this week. If a colleague would find this useful, forward them this page — or better yet, ask them to subscribe.