Author: Ranjeev C Dubey

Rivers with legal rights of a human

By Ranjeev C DubeyEnvironment Law
Calendar art depicts Ganga Maiya as a beautiful full bodied lady venerated by millions, yet her devotees violate her guiltlessly. Electoral promises to clean up the Ganga wins votes but nothing then prevents the same voters from misappropriating funds allocated for the job. In this environment of grotesque irony, what…

Pul’s perversity tale

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law
In history, no one has the last word, but the former Arunachal Chief Minister Kalikho Pul’s suicide note must at least be a kind of judicial full stop. The note is as you would expect a credible suicide note to be: a potent 60 page tale of misappropriation of public…

Invisible Elephant in the Court Room

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
If you live long enough, you come to realize that today’s outrageous is next week’s new normal. Like 18 hour power outages, people can get used to almost anything. Eleven years ago, Praveen Babi, the iconic Bollywood heroine of my generation died leaving much of what she owned to charity.…

Voting For God’s Sake

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
Between chacha-bhatija battles within the Samajwadi Party and an election budget allegedly decimated by demonetisation within the BSP, it seems the Gods may well be on the side of Hindutva in the upcoming UP elections. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled on January 5 that candidates can’t ask people to vote…

Voting For God’s Sake

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
Between chacha-bhatija battles within the Samajwadi Party and an election budget allegedly decimated by demonetisation within the BSP, it seems the Gods may well be on the side of Hindutva in the upcoming UP elections. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled on January 5 that candidates can’t ask people to vote…

Sanctimonious Surrogacy

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
It’s not just death and taxes that are certain: it’s also the law’s voyeuristic interest in the bedrooms of citizens! We have long struggled with the manner in which the law minds our private business. 2015 saw a bitter battle to determine if the law should decide which human orifices…

Self-inflicted Wounds

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
When the Supreme Court directed the Government of India to establish a National Disaster Mitigation Fund in May 2016, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley observed that India’s judiciary was destroying its institution structure “step by step, brick by brick”. Who is responsible for this judicial activism is a matter of debate,…