Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur is a National Law University located at Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India. It was established by the Madhya Pradesh Dharmashastra National Law University Ordinance in 2018.
This article examines the constitutionality of the Cyber Security Directions released by Computer Emergency Response Team India (CERT-In).The new guidelines issued by CERT-In, the nodal agency of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, have been in the news in India due to concerns being raised by various companies and privacy watchdogs like the Internet Freedom Foundation that the guidelines were affecting the fundamental right to privacy and personal autonomy of the individuals.The guidelines promulgated give CERT-In the authority to demand and retain various kinds of personally identifiable information for more than 5 years.The mandates related to virtual private network service providers are unreasonable and violative of user privacy, while the domain of information that is to be collected is ambiguous and unspecified for the purpose, thus increasing the chances of surveillance and potential censorship.The authors also give suggestions on how to overcome anomalies which are present in the guidelines issued by CERT-In.
On 24th March 2020, the first nationwide complete lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister of India for 21 days which was later extended to 31st May 2020. Consequently, thousands of migrant workers placed in big cities had no other option but to go back to their native villages. Their journeys back to villages- thousands of kilometres on bicycles or foot due to the non-availability of public transport amidst the travel ban- were driven by the compulsions of food and shelter. In one of many heart-wrenching incidents, sixteen laborers were run over by a freight train (all passenger trains in the wake of lockdown had been halted) while they were resting on the railway tracks. The images of the Roti (Indian bread) on the railway track strewn across were beamed on the national news channels, as a telling commentary of the unimaginable hardships of these workers. Ironically, in the eyes of law, they were trespassers under the Indian Railways Act, 1989. The Indian Railway did not pay any compensation to the victims. Their act also violated the Indian Disaster Management Act, 2005 and Indian Penal Code, 1860- the law for the breach of lockdown guidelines and the law for disobedience of order by public servants respectively- for having decided to travel amidst a travel ban. The semiotics of law-making acts ‘criminal’ bereft of ‘moral culpability’ are seldom questioned on their supposed amoral foundations. Pandemic exhibited that social fissures not only condition the individual or community actions but also the actions of the State. Minorities especially Muslims were at the receiving end of State’s selective enforcement of lockdown laws in India. The various instances in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic expose the hollow claims of equality before the law and the equal protection of laws as a constitutional promise to every citizen. This article aims to unravel the ostensible and the actual moral exhibition of such Indian laws through the lens of several incidents during the nationwide lockdown in India. This paper would argue that this constructed positivist amorality needs to be deconstructed to unearth the power imbalance that it seeks to hide.
With the introduction of the Self-Reliant India initiative, the Government of India (GOI) has underlined the importance of trade policy instruments to augment the capabilities of the domestic manufacturing sector. It has used both tariffs and non-tariff measures (NTMs) but NTMs have emerged as an important instrument of India’s trade strategy under the Self-Reliant India initiative. This article analyses selected NTMs i.e., import monitoring mechanism, quality standards (QSs), and changes in Rules of Origin (RoO) to understand the broader orientation of India’s trade policy. Findings demonstrate that the introduction of these NTMs are aimed at fostering a strong ecosystem for NTMs to restrict imports thereby extending protection to the domestic industry from international competition. It also reflects that India’s broad trade policy orientation is gradually moving towards a protectionist regime under the ‘self-reliant’ agenda. Trade policy, Non-Tariff measures, Non-Tariff Barriers, Import monitoring system, Quality standards, Rules of origin, Self-Reliant, etc.
The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 and the National Register of Citizens in India are perceived as reflective of a religious classification in grant and continuance of Indian citizenship. The study aimed to discuss the future effects of the amended Citizenship Act 2019 and suggest alternatives to accommodate India's constitutional ethos. A considerable fraction of the Indian citizenry was discorded with this Act because Article 14 of the Indian Constitution prohibits discrimination based on religion, among other grounds. On the other hand, the state's stance asserted that the law aims to protect the persecuted religious minorities from other states. This study dealt with the nuances and intricacies of the problem to explicate viable solutions by an in-depth analysis of the issue in an unprejudiced manner where it used a combined doctrinal and empirical research to assess the perspectives on the policy in the Global South from the Indian experience. The findings reflected that while a majority of the provisions in the Act can be justified based on constitutional parameters, its few provisions are unconstitutional. In summary, even after juxtaposing all the justifications of the Act against the allegations, a considerable portion of the Act remains unconstitutional, and it needs to be revisited based on constitutional parameters.
The digital economy and multi-faceted markets have significantly contributed to the efficacy of most transactions governing modern humankind. Digital platforms have become an irreplaceable cross-border asset that has acclimatized with technological advancements. However, there is obscurity in the methods of accommodation of digital economy in competition laws of most jurisdictions globally. Consequently, there are ascertainable issues in competition laws of such jurisdictions. Such issues remain unaddressed due to the absence of evaluation parameters of digital platforms in the conventional market system and culminate into an Implicit and undetected abuse of dominance. This study used the doctrinal method by highlighting the distinctness of contemporary digital markets and their consequential issues. This study explicated the issues in the competition that need to be independently addressed, considering the intricacies of digital platforms. The presence of non-price factors, multi-faceted markets, and data-driven networks being the primary source of such novel issues have been particularly explicated. The established premise was substantiated by way of case studies of major events involving factors such as predation, deep discounting, and data privacy. Elucidation of the competition system in most jurisdictions in Asia and the accommodation of digital platforms in the same was also sufficiently enunciated to present a holistic insight to the established premise. Finally, the authors suggested ways to sufficiently address the issues arising from the distinctness of digital platforms, thereby giving rise to a dynamic and all-inclusive competition. KEYWORDS: Digital Markets, Competition Law, Data Privacy.
