[R. Kavipriyan and Pranshu Gupta are 4th year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) students at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad] The Compensation Cess Controversy In the immediate aftermath of the Coronavirus pandemic, the Union Finance Minister announced that the revenue shortfall experienced by the States would not be entirely compensated by the Centre, claiming that the said shortfall is on account of an...
Towards a Proportionate Regulatory Framework for Virtual Currencies
[Anshul Semwal is a 5th year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] On April 6, 2018, the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’), a staunch critic of virtual currencies (‘VCs’), issued a circular banning the trade of VCs. The ban was short-lived as, two years later, the Supreme Court quashed the circular on the ground of proportionality in Internet and Mobile...
Data Protection, Privacy and the Law: Is India Ready Yet?
[Ali Waris Rao is an in-house legal counsel at Hindalco Industries Ltd., Aditya Birla Group. The views expressed are personal] The debate surrounding big data, privacy and security in India has gained considerable traction. One may ask how the legal and regulatory framework in India surrounding big data, surveillance, internet of things (IoT – Tech 5.0), cybersecurity and privacy balance...
Can Competition Law Regulate Privacy?
[Jyotsna Vilva is a 5th year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] The question of regulation of privacy and data protection issues through competition law has gained traction in recent years. In the past, while the European Commission has considered privacy to be a parameterof non-price competition, both the European Court of Justice and the...
Madras High Court on Regulating Online Gaming
[Prakshal Jain is a 2018 graduate of National Law School of India University, Bangalore and is working with the dispute resolution practice group of a law firm in Mumbai] The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court in D Siluvai Venance v. State noted that the increasing popularity of online gaming has created an alarming situation in the state of Tamil Nadu, especially among the youth. The Court...
The IBC’s Circle of Interpretation: Univalue Projects Pvt. Ltd. v. The Union of India
[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 authors would like to thank Mr. Rahul Sibal for his comments on the post] On August 18, 2020, a Single Judge of the Calcutta High Court in Univalue Projects Pvt. Ltd. v. The Union of India struck down an order passed by the Registrar of...
The Existential Crisis of a Decree-Holding Homebuyer under IBC
[Mayank Udhwani is a graduate of National Law University, Jodhpur] The decision of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (“NCLAT”) in Sushil Ansal v. Ashok Tripathi has become a cause for concern for the homebuyers. In this decision, the NCLAT has held that a homebuyer, who has obtained a decree in its favor from a court of competent jurisdiction, ceases to be a financial creditor. In this...
Balasore Alloys v. Medima: Rethinking Anti-Arbitral Injunctions
[Aarohi Chaudhuri is a second-year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] Anti-arbitration injunctions refer to injunctions granted by civil courts to stay the initiation or continuance of arbitration proceedings. Traditionally, Indian courts have laid down conflicting jurisprudence on civil courts’ powers to intervene in an arbitration by granting...
Karnataka High Court Decision in the Franklin Templeton Case
The Karnataka High Court yesterday issued its 336-page ruling on the highly contested winding up of six schemes of the Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund (“FTMF”). FTMF’s decision was the subject matter of challenge before various High Courts, and the Supreme Court directed a transfer of all related petitions to the Karnataka High Court, which held a mammoth virtual hearing over several days before...
SEBI Rules on Misapplication of IPO Funds
In an order issued yesterday involving Birla Pacific Medspa Limited (“BPML”), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) was faced with an alleged misapplication of IPO funds by the company way back in 2011. Through a prospectus issued on June 29, 2011, the company raised Rs. 65.17 crores to establish “Evolve” Medspa centres across India, which constituted the primary purpose of the...
Call for Submissions: Special Issue of NLS Business Law Review on International Arbitration
[Announcement on behalf of the NLS Business Law Review] The Board of Editors of the National Law School Business Law Review is pleased to invite original and unpublished manuscripts for the Special Issue of the NLS Business Law Review. About the Institution The National Law School of India University is an institution of legal education focusing on legal and policy education in India at the...
SEBI Relaxes Norms for Delisting of a Listed Subsidiary
[Sanjana Arvind Kumar and Divya Rau are final year law students at Jindal Global Law School] The Securities Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) through, its board meeting, on 29 September 2020, approved an amendment to the SEBI (Delisting of Equity Shares) Regulations, 2009 (“Delisting Regulations”). The amendment aims to simplify the delisting procedure for listed subsidiaries of listed companies...
Foreign Contribution (Regulatory) Amendment Act, 2020: A Challenge for Non-Profits?
[Shreya Mishra and Ayesha Bhattacharya are recent graduates of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. The authors would like to thank Prof. Umakanth Varottil for his comments] Recently, the Central Government froze the accounts of Amnesty International India, citing violation of foreign funding laws, while the latter has accused the Central Government of halting its...
Why is Bilateral Netting Relevant?
[Lakshmi Babu is a corporate lawyer with an interest in financial regulation] The Central Government has recently notified the Bilateral Netting of Qualified Financial Contracts Act, 2020 (“Netting Act”), which intends to implement the process of bilateral netting among eligible financial parties. The Netting Act is effective from October 1, 2020. Netting, in essence, means the off-setting of all...
Demystifying the Air around Lease and Rental Operational Debt
[Aridaman Raghav is a 3rd year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi] The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (‘NCLAT’) in Anup Dubey v. National Agricultural Co-operative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) Ltd. & Ors.(7 October 2020) has held that lease rentals arising out of the use of a cold storage unit for commercial purpose can be...
An Argument in Favour of an Effectively Mandatory CCI Approval Under Section 31(4) of the IBC- Part II
[Mayank Udhwani and Ragini Agarwal have recently graduated from National Law University, Jodhpur. Part I in this series is available here] In this two-part series, the authors argue that the provision under section 31(4) of the IBC must not be watered down and that approval from the CCI must be obtained prior to the approval of the resolution plan by the adjudicating authority. In part-I, the...
An Argument in Favour of an Effectively Mandatory CCI Approval Under Section 31(4) of the IBC – Part I
[Mayank Udhwani and Ragini Agarwal have recently graduated from National Law University, Jodhpur] The introduction of section 31(4) through the Insolvency and Bankruptcy (Second Amendment) Act, 2018 was intended to fine tune the workings of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 [‘IBC’]. The clause provides that the resolution applicant is required to obtain necessary statutory approvals...
Examining the Issues Related to TDR under GST
[Madhura Karanth is a fourth year student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. The author is thankful to Mr. Mihir Naniwadekar for valuable inputs] A Joint Development Agreement (“JDA”) is common in the Indian construction industry. A landowner and a developer enter into such an arrangement, where the developer undertakes to develop the owner’s land. Usually, the constructed area is shared...
E-contracts and E-signatures in a Post-Covid Era – Deficiencies in the Current Framework?
[Ayesha Bhattacharya is a graduate of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata (Batch of 2019)] As the covid-19 pandemic continues to rage across the world, the corporate and the commercial factions of business have witnessed major disruptions. Most commercial negotiations rely on execution of documents in physical format and while start-ups and tech enabled businesses...
Regulating Listed PSUs for Disclosures and Transparency
[Gaurav Pingle is a practising company secretary] True, fair, adequate and timely disclosures form one of the basic tenets of governance in listed companies and are essential for maintaining the integrity of the securities market. Timely disclosures of material events are of significant importance. They also bring about transparency and enable the investors to take an informed investment or...
The Vodafone Arbitration and the Idea of the Rule of Law
[Nigam Nuggehalli is the Dean, School of Law, BML Munjal University. He is the author of a monograph on international taxation from an Indian perspective] On Friday last week, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague unanimously decided that India’s imposition of a retrospective tax on Vodafone was in violation of the India-Netherlands Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) that required the...
Scope of ‘Patent Illegality’ in Refusing Enforcement of Arbitral Awards
[Abhijeet Shrivastava is a 3rd year law student and Anujay Shrivastava a law graduate (class of 2020), both from Jindal Global Law School. We are extremely grateful to the editorial team at IndiaCorpLaw for their valuable inputs and editorial assistance.] Among the various grounds to set aside or refuse enforcement of an arbitral award, the ground of ‘patent illegality’ has been the subject of a...
Re-Inventing the Supreme Court’s Ruling in Innoventive Industries
[Ragini Agarwal is a graduate from National Law University, Jodhpur. The author would like to thank Mayank Udhwani for his inputs on the article.] Innoventive Industries v. ICICI Bank (2017) was the first landmark Supreme Court judgment that explained the ethos of the newly introduced Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (“IBC”) as a code that marked a “paradigm shift in law” (at paragraph 11) to...
Asset Allocation for Multi-Cap Funds
[Divya Rau is a final-year law student at Jindal Global Law School] The Securities Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) issued new guidelines regarding asset allocation by multi-cap funds on 11 September 2020 (“New Circular”). A multi-cap fund refers to “an open ended equity scheme investing across large-cap, mid-cap, small-cap stocks”. Large-caps refer to the top 100 firms by market capitalisation...
Amendment to Section 7 of The IBC: A Well-Intentioned Constitutional Fallacy?
[Ridhi Arora and Hitoishi Sarkar are III Year B.A. LL.B (Hons.) students at Gujarat National Law University] Section 3 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy (Amendment) Act, 2020 (‘Amendment’), added certain provisos to section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (‘Code’) whereby special conditions were added for real estate allottees to qualify as a financial creditor under the Code. The...
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