Last week, the Supreme Court’s order constituting a committee to settle the ongoing farmer agitation was critiqued across the entire spectrum of left-to-right wing commentary. At about the same time, in a case involving PayPal, a popular online payment gateway service in India, the Delhi High Court passed an order directing the Finance Ministry to set up a committee to address the following...
Andhra High Court Rejects Insider Trading Claims on Land
Rooted in preserving market integrity, the concept of insider trading emerged and has been ingrained in the context of the securities markets. Despite the well-understood nature of the subject-matter of insider trading, a question recently arose on whether the offence can be extended to the purchase and sale of land. In Chekka Guru Murali Mohan v. The State of Andhra Pradesh (decided 19 January...
Pump and Dump? SEBI Order against TV Anchor and Family
In a somewhat unconventional interim order, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued a series of directions against CNBC Awaaz anchor Hemant Ghai, his wife Jaya Hemant Ghai and his mother Shyam Mohini Ghai. SEBI’s preliminary examination of prices of certain stocks indicated a pattern of trading that potentially violated the SEBI Act, 1992 and the SEBI (Prohibition of Fraudulent...
China’s Claim concerning App Ban Under International Investment and Trade Law – Part II
[Angeline Priety and Rohin Goyal are fourth-year law students at Gujarat National Law University] In Part I of this post, we explained the possible recourse that Chinese investors may have against India’s app ban under the Indo-China Bilateral Investment Treaty (“BIT”). In Part II, we shall first examine India’s possible defence against claims by Chinese investors under the Indo-China BIT and...
China’s Claim concerning App Ban Under International Investment and Trade Law – Part I
[Angeline Priety and Rohin Goyal are fourth-year law students at Gujarat National Law University] On September 2, 2020, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology released a press note banning 118 mobile applications of Chinese origin. This blocking order, the third such order in a span of two months, was prompted by concerns with respect to the sovereignty of India, particularly...
A Need to Revisit the SEBI (Intermediaries) Regulations, 2008
[Pallavi Mishra is a 5th year student at Hidayatullah National Law University] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) notified the SEBI (Intermediaries) Regulations, 2008 were notified as an attempt to consolidate various laws governing the market intermediaries in India. These regulations lay down the common procedural compliances and adjudicatory mechanisms. They are enforced along...
Vidya Drolia Case: Final Chapter in the Arbitrability of Fraud Saga?
[Sumit Chatterjee and Rajashri Seal are students at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] On 14 December 2020, the Indian Supreme Court delivered its judgement in Vidya Drolia v. Durga Trading Corporation (‘Vidya Drolia’), addressing a host of issues pertaining to the domestic arbitration framework in India. By laying down a definitive checklist to determine whether a particular...
Future-Amazon Case and the Bumpy Road to Emergency Arbitrations in India
[Aakanksha Jadhav and Mustafa Rajkotwala are 3rd year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) students at NUJS, Kolkata and NALSAR, Hyderabad, respectively] In a significant boost to party autonomy in India, the Delhi High Court explicitly recognised the compatibility of emergency arbitrations with the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (the ‘Act’) in the recent decision in Future Retail Limited v. Amazon...
A Review of “Investment Funds in India – A Legal Handbook”
[Ganesh Rao is a partner at Trilegal] Alok Verma and Karan Trehan’s Investment Funds in India – A Legal Handbook focuses on the legal regime governing investment funds in India and, in doing so, is probably one of the first books to be published in this field. The Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (“SEBI”) SEBI (Alternative Investment Funds) Regulations, 2012 (“AIF Regulations”) are...
Decluttering the 2020 Amendment to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996
[Animesh Bordoloi is an Assistant Lecturer at the Jindal Global Law School and Hitoishi Sarkar is a III year student at the Gujarat National Law University] The recent Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 (“Ordinance”), which amended section 36, has once again put the Indian arbitration discourse in the center stage. In a rarity, the ordinance reverses the 2015...
Self-Assessment of Non-Compete Clauses: The New Normal
[Pranshu Gupta and Roopam Dadhich are 4th year B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) students at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad] On 26 November 2020, the Competition Commission of India (‘CCI’) introduced an amendment to the CCI (Procedure in regard to the transaction of business relating to combinations) Regulations, 2011 (‘Combination Regulations’), through which para 5.7 of Form I has been deleted making it...
Stay on NCLAT Order Rejecting Withdrawal of Resolution Plan – Unsettling the Dust Once Again
[Richa Pathak is an alumna of the London School of Economics and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Mansi Mishra is a fourth-year student at National Law Institute University, Bhopal] The Supreme Court vide its order dated November 16, 2020, stayed the operation and effect of the judgment of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (“NCLAT”) in the case of Kundan Care Products...
Foreign Jurisdiction Clauses in Commercial Contracts: An Indian Perspective
[Sneha Kalia is a 5th year B.B.A. L.L.B. (Hons.) student at Jindal Global Law School, Haryana] The advent of globalisation and burgeoning international business transactions essentially necessitate contracts with carefully carved-out dispute resolution provisions so as to mitigate the hassle of litigating in an inconvenient or time-consuming forum. To further that end, the incorporation of a...
Choosing a Foreign Seat: A New Dilemma for Two Indian Parties?
[Tawishi Beria and Rakshit Assudani are 4th year B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) students at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, Haryana] The Gujarat High Court in GE Power Conversion India Private Limited v. PASL Wind Solutions Private Limited (decided 3 November 2020) addressed two critical issues that have been plagued with ambiguity in the Indian arbitration framework for a long time, namely, Indian...
Analysis of SEBI’s Proposal on the Delisting Regulations
[Abhinav Gupta and Ayush Khandelwal are final year students at National Law University, Jodhpur] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) on 20 November 2020 issued a consultation paper to review the SEBI (Delisting of Equity Shares) Regulations, 2009. It aims to enhance disclosures to help investors to make informed decisions, rationalize the timeline under the Delisting Regulations...
Supreme Court Affirms Expansive Locus Standi under Competition Law
The Supreme Court in Samir Agrawal v. Competition Commission of India (decided 15 December 2020) was concerned with some basic but important questions of law. Can a member of the public file information with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) alleging a violation of the provisions of the Competition Act, 2002 and thereby triggering an investigation by the regulatory authority? If aggrieved...
Call for Papers | International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice
[Announcement on behalf of the International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice] The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) is an institution of legal education focusing on undergraduate and graduate legal and policy education in India. The International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice (IJCLP) is a blind-peer-reviewed, law journal published annually by NLSIU under the aegis of the...
Corporate Ownership in Private Banks: Setting the Cat among the Pigeons
[Pramod Rao is Group General Counsel, ICICI Bank. This post represents his personal views] With the release of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Report of the internal working group to review extant ownership guidelines and corporate structure for Indian private sector banks, several articles and commentaries have been published. What has attracted attention has been a...
CCI’s Market Study on Private Equity: Time to Clear the Air?
[Priya Maharishi is a 4th-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, Haryana] The issue of common ownership and its impact on the competition landscape has preoccupied the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for a long time. The concern has become pressing in the light of increase in private equity (PE) investments in India. To show some teeth in the game, the CCI...
Call for Papers: NUJS Journal on Dispute Resolution
[Announcement on behalf of the Journal on Dispute Resolution] The Journal on Dispute Resolution (‘JODR’) is the flagship biannual journal of the Mediation Clinic published under the aegis of West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. It is an open-access, student-reviewed journal and aims to provide a platform for the discussion of national as well as international...
Arbitration And Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020: Will It Do More Harm Than Good?
[Ramkishore Karanam is a senior associate at AK Law Chambers and practices at the Madras High Court] The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, which was promulgated on 4 November 2020 (“2020 Ordinance”), has currently created a furore. The 2020 Ordinance essentially seeks to make the following amendments: a) to grant unconditional stay of the arbitral award under section 36...
Moratorium on Termination of Contracts during CIRP: Need for a Clarification
[Ragini Agarwal and Mayank Udhwani are graduate students at the National Law University, Jodhpur] As per any standard commercial contract, initiation of insolvency against a party is considered as a material breach of the contract. Such a material breach often gives the non-defaulting party a right to terminate the contract. However, owing to section 14(1)(b) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy...
Call for Papers | Delhi Law Review Vol XXXVI (2021)
[Announcement on behalf of the Delhi Law Review] The Delhi Law Review (DLR) [ISSN 0971-4936] is the flagship journal of the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi and is one of the oldest law journals in the country having been published since 1972. The DLR is an annual, double-blind peer reviewed journal. Types of Submissions Delhi Law Review (DLR) invites scholarly, original and unpublished...
Call for Papers: NLIU Law Review
The NLIU Law Review is the flagship journal of the National Law Institute University, Bhopal. It is a peer-reviewed academic law journal, published biannually by the students of the University. The Law Review aims to promote a culture of scholarly research and academic writing by bringing to the forefront, articles on subjects of interest to the legal profession and academia. The NLIU Law...
Extinguishment of a Personal Guarantor’s Right of Subrogation: A Critique
[Vijay Rohan Krishna is pursuing his LLM (Corporate and Commercial Laws) at NUJS, Kolkata, and Sambhawi Sanghamitra is a 3rd year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at CNLU, Patna] Ever since personal guarantors were made liable under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) by way of the notification dated 15 November 2019, their rights and liabilities under the IBC have been extensively debated...
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