Articles by Alok Prasanna Kumar

Some of India’s largest cities with a population of a little more or less than one crore, have gone without a municipal government for several years. This is another key failing of the 74th amendment to the Constitution—the lack of provisions ensuring that urban governance can be carried out without state government interference. This article uses the example of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike to highlight some of the problems with the constitutional provisions relating to urban local bodies and the inconsistent intervention by the courts.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 is notably silent on a key agency that it proposed to set up to enforce the law—the Data Protection Board. This silence has implications for the constitutional validity of the provisions in question, especially since the bill excludes the jurisdiction of civil courts and makes the board the sole mechanism for the enforcement of rights and liabilities under the bill.

While the Constitution makes no distinction between judges appointed from the Bar or from the subordinate judiciary, the data shows that there is an implicit difference that results in fewer members from the subordinate judiciary serving in the high courts for shorter periods of time, and less likely to be the chief justices.

The pullback of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 has nullified the multi-year efforts put in by various stakeholders that have gone into shaping the bill. The promise of a “comprehensive legal framework” to protect the citizens’ data is a hollow one, coming with no clear deadlines or underlying principles.

With respect to the independence of the judiciary, there is a tendency to conflate the independence of the institution with that of the individual in the institution. An independent judiciary requires not only systems and norms designed to prevent interference but also individuals prepared to uphold such independence at great cost. One such individual was Justice Syed Mahmood who served in the Allahabad High Court during British Rule.