In the case of National Legal Services Authority v Union of India, it was held that transgenders are to be placed in the third gender category for availing the services. They faced trouble in linking their 12-digit Aadhaar number to Permanent Account Number (PAN). The notification was issued to recognize transgenders as independent gender.

After the amendment, the PAN application form shall contain a tick box for transgender. This change shall be evident in both forms i.e. Form 49A(PAN application form for Indian citizens) and Form 49AA(PAN application for individuals not a citizen of India).

The notification was issued under section 295 of the Act by Central Board for Direct Taxes.  The notification, issued under sections 139A and 295 of the Income Tax Act, specifies the new application process for obtaining a PAN number by an individual for easier tax-related transactions.

The government has now made disclosing of Aadhaar Number mandatory for filing income tax returns (ITRs) as well as obtaining a new PAN. Section 139 AA (2) of the Income Tax Act provides that every person having PAN as on July 1, 2017, and eligible to obtain Aadhaar, must intimate his Aadhaar number to the tax authorities.

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The test was ruled out to be derogatory and undignified. It was ordered to send a copy of healthcare protocol to all lower courts for its compliance. There is no legal or scientific basis for the ‘two-finger test’ during the physical examination of women and children rape victims, the court said in its order.

The Court held that lawyers cannot ask any question to rape victims that could hurt their dignity during the trial proceedings.  The Court ordered authorities to strictly adhere to the health care protocol which the government adopted last year in line with the World Health Organisation (WHO) policies.

The health ministry of Bangladesh is asked to form a committee of experts to develop a detailed guideline to provide support to rape victims on examination and treatment and submit the guideline to the court in three months. The ministry has submitted the draft guideline, proposing abolishing the two-finger test.

The two-finger test is used to determine the vaginal laxity of rape victims and to determine whether the victim is habituated to sexual intercourse or not.

In the catena of Indian judgments also it has been reiterated by Indian Courts that two-finger test is not admissible but it is not banned yet.

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Prasar Bharti Doordarshan Kendra has its Regional Branch at Trivandrum. The Prasar Bharti’s channel, Doordarshan, in the course of their business, regularly telecasted advertisements of several consumer companies. Prasar Bharti entered in agreement with advertising agencies in which these agencies had to make an application to Prasar Bharti to get the accredited status for their Agency so as to enable them to do business with the Prasar Bharti of telecasting the advertisements of several consumer products manufactured by several companies on the Prasar Bharti’s Doordarshan TV Channel. It also provided that the appellant would pay 15% by way of commission to the Agency. The agreement also provided the manner, mode and the time within which the payment was to be made by the Agency to the appellant. The failure to make the payment was to result in losing the accredited status by the Agency. The Agency was to give minimum annual business of Rs.6 Lakhs to the appellant in a financial year failing which their accredited status was liable to be withdrawn. The Agency was to furnish a bank guarantee for a sum of Rs.3 Lakhs.

Prasar Bharti was an assessee under Income Tax Act, 1963 in the assessment year 2002-2003 and 2003-2004, Prasar Bharti paid a sum of Rs.2,56,75,165/- and Rs.2,29,65,922/- to various accredited Agencies, with whom they had entered into the aforementioned agreement as commission for telecasting the advertisements given by these Agencies relating to products manufactured by several consumer companies.

The issue which arose before Assessing Officer (AO) that whether Section 194H of the Income Tax Act was applicable to the payments made by Prasar Bharti, if so, whether the Prasar Bharti deducted “tax at source” as provided under Section 194H of the Act from the amount paid by the Prasar Bharti to the Agencies. Assessing Officer was of that Section 194H was applicable and thus channel failed to deduct the tax at source thereby attracting the provisions of Section 201(1) of the Act during the Assessment years 2002-2003 and 2003-2004.

Aggrieved with the order of Assessing Officer, Prasar Bharti appealed to the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals)-II (CIT Appeals), Thiruvanathapuram. The appeal was dismissed. The matter went to the Tribunal which set aside the orders passed by AO and CIT (Appeals).

The appeal was made by Revenue (Income Tax Department) to High Court of Kerala at Earnakulam under Section 260-A of the Income Tax Act. The High Court restored the order of CIT (Appeals) and AO, as Prasar Bharti committed default of non-compliance of Section 194H resulting in attracting the provisions of Section 201 of the Act.

The counsel for Prasar Bharti submitted that the accredited agencies were not working as agent of the appellant and nor the appellant was paying them any amount by way of commission. He pointed out that the Agencies, in terms of the agreement, purchased the air time from Prasar Bharti. It was, therefore, his submission that such transaction cannot be regarded as being between the principal and agent and nor the payment can be regarded as having been made by way of commission so as to attract the rigor of Section 194H and Section 201 of the Act.

The counsel for Prasar Bharti relied on the case of Jagran Prakashan Ltd vs. Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax(TDS), (2012)345 ITR 288 in support of his submission. The Apex court did not accept the precedent cited as the facts of the precedent cited did not match with the present instance.

In reply, learned counsel for the respondent supported the impugned judgment and contended that the order passed by the AO, CIT (Appeals) and the impugned judgment deserve to be upheld as all the three orders are based on proper reasoning calling no interference.

Having heard the learned counsel for the parties and on perusal of the record of the case, we find no merit in these appeals. Therefore, Prasar Bharti failed to comply with the provisions of Section 194H of the Act.

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“The total statutory abolition of the marital rape exemption is the first necessary step in teaching societies that dehumanised treatment of women will not be tolerated and that the marital rape is not a husband’s privilege, but rather a violent act and an injustice that must be criminalised,” the court said.

A petition was filed by a man pleading to quash FIR filed by his wife alleging offence of rape (Indian Penal Code 376) and unnatural sex (Indian Penal Code 377), among other charges.

Justice J B Pardiwala said a man can’t be booked for raping his wife under section 376 of the IPC, since it was not covered under IPC 375. “The husband cannot be prosecuted for the offence of rape at the instance of his wife in view of exception-II in section 375 of IPC, which provides that sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, who is not being under 18 years of age, is not rape.”

The court quashed the charges of rape and sodomy but it ordered to add sections for sexual harassment and domestic violence under section 498a of the IPC.

Justice Pardiwala said: “…A law that doesn’t give married and unmarried women equal protection creates conditions that lead to the marital rape. It allows the men and women to believe that wife’s rape is acceptable.”

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According to the press release last night, accreditation of a journalist (both television and print) can be cancelled/annulled if the new reported by them is found to be “fake”. The fake news shall be referred to the Press Council of India (PCI) if the news was published in print media and to the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) if it pertains to electronic media. A limitation period of 15 days has been fixed for these agencies to dispose of each complaint. During this period of 15 days, accreditation stands suspended. If the guideline is violated by publishing the fake news then, the accreditation shall be suspended for a period of 6 months in the first violation and for one year in the case of second violation and in the event of third violation it would be cancelled permanently.

n a strongly-worded statement, the Editors Guild said, “By notifying that the I&B Ministry will initiate such proceedings, the government was arrogating for itself the role of policing the media. It would have opened the door for frivolous complaints to harass journalists and organisations to fall in line.”

It also said that the Guild acknowledges the intervention of the prime minister but remains “deeply disturbed” that faith continues to be reposed on the Press Council of India (PCI) to deliver justice on such issues.

“The recent reconstitution of the PCI has been done in a manner that gives rise to doubts over the independence of the institution and its ability to play neutral umpire.

The Guild’s nominees to the Council were disallowed on technical grounds. Also, the recent reconstitution of the Central Press Accreditation Committee has raised questions over the non-transparent processes being followed by the I&B Ministry as the Guild’s application was ignored,” the statement said.

It further said, “The Guild also points out that ‘fake news’ is a process that cannot be left to governments to initiate action when, on many occasions, the governments and the parties in power—both at the Centre and states—are charged with propagating fake news themselves.”

This amendment was issued at 8:55 pm on Monday. It is said that PMO was unaware until the directive was made public. This directive of I&B Ministry was condemned as it was ostensibly to penalise any journalist or media organisation publishing fake news.

The retraction of the directive was welcomed by the Press Council of India.

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The government proposed to amend the Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003 (COTPA)’s application in Maharashtra.

According to Bill, minimum imprisonment of one year extending upto three years if anyone is found running hookah parlours. The Bill imposes fine of minimum of Rs. 50000 and maximum Rs. 1 lakhs, it states.

“No person shall, either on his own or on behalf of any other person, open or run any hookah bar in any place including the eating house,” state the Bill. The proposed law allows any police officer of the rank of assistant inspector or above “to seize any material or article used as a subject or means of hookah bar”.

These hookah bars are easily accessible as they run in public places as well as restaurants. At present, there is no law to regulate hookah parlours and due to these many minors and collegian are attracted to these bars, stated the statement of objects and reasons.

After COTPA is amended, an eating house will have to be defined as per the Maharashtra Police Act. This means a place where public are admitted, and where any kind of food or drink is supplied for consumption on the premises by any person owning or having an interest in or managing such place, and includes a refreshment room, boarding house, coffee house or a shop where any kind of food or drink is supplied to the public for consumption in or near such shop but does not include “a place of public entertainment”.

The Bill is drafted in consonance of the Bill regarding the same in the state of Gujarat, where a person found hookah bars illegally or in contravention of norms can be imprisoned up to three years and a minimum penalty of Rs. 50000.

The Punjab Assembly also passed a Bill that provides for the blanket ban on the ‘hookah’ bars in the state. The objective of amendment of 2003 Act is also aimed at reducing the use of tobacco in various forms.

The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2018 was moved by Health Minister Brahm Mohindra.

The new trend of hookah-sheesha smoking is increasing day by day and these bars are being opened in restaurants, hotels, clubs and even in marriage palaces and the youth, including girls, are using hard and soft drugs in hookah and sheesha bars, he said.

At present, prohibitory orders under section 144 of the CrPC are promulgated against all hookah bars in all the districts of the state of Punjab for two months, with an extension required at the end of the period.

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Read the judgment: http://www.supremecourtofindia.nic.in/supremecourt/2014/21590/21590_2014_Judgement_27-Mar-2018.pdf

The post Whether a prior sanction mandatory for complaint of corruption against a public servant under S156(3) of CrPC?: Question referred to Larger Bench appeared first on Legal Desire Media and Insights.

Source: The Quint

The activists in many parts play a vital role to protect those girls who are either abandoned or miserably treated. One most of the defender of Girls is India’s, Dr. Mitu Khurana. Dr. Mitu Khurana’s story is shocking, distressing and exposing the mind-sets of the people how people cannot welcome the female child in their family. After the in-laws of Dr. Mitu abandoned her and her twin daughters she raised her daughters on her own.

Khurana, a proud mother of twin girls, was the first woman to file a case under the PNDT Act for being subjected to pre-natal sex determination test while, she claims, being heavily sedated and without her consent.

Dr. Mitu Khurana is a pediatrician, she was married to Dr. Kamal Khurana, an orthopedic surgeon in Delhi. After the marriage, she was pressurized for more dowry. They wanted a new car, more jewelry, an apartment. They harassed her when these demands were not met.

In January 2005, Mitu became pregnant. Her husband was initially happy with her pregnancy news. That is until her mother-in-law started demanding that a sex determination test to be done. Mitu discovered she was carrying twins in February. The in-laws wanted that atleast one of them must be a male-child.

India enacted the law to stop female foeticide. Mitu refused to have sex-determination test done. She persecuted by her husband and in-laws for her stubbornness.  They confined her in a room a devised a plan. Mitu is allergic to eggs, so they baked a cake and told her it was egg-free, forcing her to eat it. That evening, she developed severe allergic symptoms but was denied medical aid until the next morning when she was brought to the hospital.

She was admitted to the labor room even though she was just 16 weeks pregnant. She was made unconscious when she was brought to ultrasound room when the doctor ended up doing a full scan revealing that she was carrying two baby girls. After that, she was discharged and brought to home back. She was advised for bed-rest.

Although Mitu was advised bed rest she was forced by her sister-in-law to mop the floor to induce the miscarriage. She pushed down from the staircase by her husband. Bruised and bleeding, she managed to call her father. Mitu told him that he had given her to death rather than marriage. He picked her up and brought her home the next morning.

She was in and out her entire pregnancy despite that her in-laws refused to contact her.  She gave birth to two months premature girls. After the birth of her girls, she moved back to her husband’s place thinking that they may accept her and little innocent girls. But the things did not change. When the babies were four months old, one was thrown down a flight of stairs. Fortunately, Mitu was close by and caught her before there was serious harm done. The abuse continued for two more years as it became clear that Mitu’s in-laws were not willing to accept the girls.

When Mitu’s sister-in-law was about to get married, they again started to harass her for dowry as her sister-in-laws wanted more dowry. Mitu’s parents refused to pay. After two months of the Mitu’s sister-in-law’s marriage, she came back home and filed a case against her husband and in-laws for dowry and domestic abuse. She got a divorce.

At this point, Mitu was no longer welcome in her husband’s home. He hacked into her e-mail account and sent fake love letters to her brother-in-law to defame her, wanting a divorce so he could re-marry and have a son. His mother insisted on keeping all Mitu’s dowry jewelry, which Mitu handed over, considering it a small price to pay for her daughters to have a stable home. Her husband took separate accommodations and Mitu was thrown out into the night.

Mitu filed a complaint under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 (PC&PNDT Act) against her husband as well as the doctors and the hospital that performed the illegal sex-determination test. She was the first woman to do so in Delhi, more than 10 years after the Act was first passed. The purpose of the Act is to regulate and prevent the misuse of diagnostic tests. Instead of appreciating her for her stand, Mitu was told by the official on the case that she should “stop wasting her life and give her husband a son if he wanted one.”

To pressure her, her husband filed a custody claim against her, having an apparent sudden change of heart about wanting the girls. Mitu lost her job and is still being harassed because she filed a suit against a big hospital. Most people feel she was in the wrong and her in-laws were justified in their desire for a boy.

A year after a Delhi trial court struck a blow to Dr Mitu Khurana’s hopes, the Supreme Court dismissed her case. In 2008, Dr Khurana filed a case against her husband Dr Kamal Khurana, her mother-in-law and another member of his family, for allegedly colluding with a hospital official to determine the gender of her foetuses while she was pregnant in 2005. Khurana was then pressurised into undergoing an abortion once it was determined she was carrying girls.

On September 16, the Supreme Court dismissed Dr Khurana’s petition against the Delhi high court judgement that ruled against her, reportedly after a five-minute hearing, bringing an end to Khurana’s almost 11-year struggle for justice.

According to dna reports from last year, Khurana, in her petition, alleged that her in-laws “pressured her continually” to determine the sex of the foetuses. When she resisted, they allegedly “tricked her” into being admitted to Jaipur Golden Hospital in Delhi, where they allegedly conspired with doctors to get a sex determination test done.

In her complaint, Khurana said her in-laws fed her cake with egg, which she is allergic to, making her ill.

According to lawyer Anu Narula, who interacted with the media along with Khurana on Tuesday, the high court judgement, which was upheld by the Supreme Court, is “erroneous and full of oversight”. Narula told dna the high court dismissed Khurana’s case on two counts. It was barred by limitation as according to law, a case has to be filed under the PCPNDT Act either three years from the date of offence or from that of knowledge.

Khurana found out about the ultrasound in March 2008 after she stumbled on hospital papers. Mitu wrote to the national commission for women, who referred her to the union health ministry, which directed her to complain to the district appellate authority – a process Khurana followed up on. Also, the judgement says Khurana did not give mandatory 15-day notice to the DAA before approaching the court. “The notice is part of the pile of court papers and has been overlooked by the judge,” said Narula.

“She has been dismissed as a cantankerous petitioner who picks fights with her husband, her in-laws and the doctors,” added Narula.

Mitu has now become an against female gendercide in India, attempting to bring these horrific practices to an end.  Mitu’s father now works twice the number of hours to support her and her daughters. It is really important that the mentality of regarding the girl child in society must be changed and more people like Dr. Mitu Khurana must come forward to make “it’s a girl”, three most beautiful words in the world.

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Supreme Court fixed the fees for filing the application under the Right to Information Act. The maximum fees would be Rs. 50 and photocopying charges will not be more than Rs. 5 per page of documents sought under the Act. It was also held that public authorities shall not compel the RTI applicant to provide reason or intention for seeking information.

This order shall be binding on all institutions including High Courts, Legislative Assemblies and other government and autonomous bodies which are within the ambit of Right to Information Act, 2005.

Prashant Bhushan, the counsel on behalf of the petitioners contended that the Allahabad High Court charged Rs 500 per information under the RTI Act which was illegal and it was intended to discourage citizens from seeking information. He said as per the HC rule, an application for information should be for only one item, it should be accompanied by Rs 500 by way of application fee and that the citizen should pay Rs 15 for every page of information.

He contended that there was a major difference between the rules framed by Centre and the Allahabad High Court Rules. The cost of one page of information as per Central Rules is just Rs. 2 while Allahabad High Court charged R. 15 per page of the information sought. The fees for seeking the information under Central Rules is just Rs. 10 while Allahabad HC charged Rs. 500.

He also referred to an order passed by the Central Information Commission which had held that such stringent restrictive conditions, including such high level of fees, would surely deter citizens from freely seeking information from the HC which was not in conformity with the spirit of RTI Act.

The counsel for the petitioner also cited RTI application fees imposed by Chhatisgarh Vidhan Sabha. In 2011, the fee was Rs. 500 which was reduced to Rs. 300 in December 2016 which was too excessive when compared to the fees given under Central Rules.

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Clinical establishments as defined in the Clinical Establishment Act, 2010, include a wide range of medical establishments, hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, diagnostic services, including those operated by a single doctor.

Tuberculosis was made a notifiable disease in India in 2012 but there was no provision for penal action. Now, it has become a mandate for doctors, chemists and druggist, hospital authorities or any clinical establishments to notify tuberculosis cases to nodal officer and public health staff. The failure to notify will now attract penal action.

The ministry has issued separate reporting formats for laboratories and medical practitioners, clinics, hospitals, nursing homes etc. “To ensure proper tuberculosis diagnosis and its management in patients and their contacts and to reduce tuberculosis transmission and further to address the problems of emergence and spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis, it is essential to collect complete information of all tuberculosis patients… Healthcare providers, termed as clinical establishments henceforth, shall notify every tuberculosis patient to local public health authority, namely, district health officer or chief medical officer of a district and municipal health officer of urban local bodies in whatever way they are known; or their designated district tuberculosis officers in a format as specified,” says the notification.

In India, most of the TB cases are not notified and most of them remain either undiagnosed or are inadequately diagnosed and are treated in private sector. The patients don’t stick to medication before the dose is completed as a result the bacteria become resistant to drug which leads to drug resistant TB.

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