India: Constitutional & Administrative Law

Arbitration is known to be a preferred mechanism for dispute resolution in comparison to court proceedings. One of the many reasons arbitration is preferred to court proceedings is time efficiency. Arbitration stakeholders globally recognise the need for expedited outcomes and often advocate the necessity for further enhancing arbitration processes with newer expedited arbitration mechanisms.

Between early 2025 and mid-July 2026, the Supreme Court settled a question that had kept real estate developers across India on edge: can a project that broke ground without environmental clearance (‘EC’) ever be regularised after the fact? Across a series of rulings culminating in Vanashakti II, the Court clarified the legal status of ex post facto EC’s and spelt out what they mean for projects already built, those still under construction and those yet to leave the drawing board.

Is India's Election Commission still truly independent? Two developments happened sometime back. The first is the most basic one of all: who gets to choose the people who run our elections? For decades, the government chose them alone. In 2023, the Supreme Court said they should be picked by a neutral panel, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and the Chief Justice of India, to build independence into the process, but only until Parliament made its own law. And when it did, it replaced the Chief Justice with a minister chosen by the Prime Minister, giving the government two votes on a three-member panel.

The Hon’ble Punjab and Haryana High Court (HC) in Jyoti Sareen vs. UOI & Others (CWP No. 15791-2024 (O&M)) (Order) held the retrospective amendments carried out vide the Finance Act, 2026, with respect to the powers of the Jurisdictional Assessing Officer (JAO) to issue a reopening notice under section 148 (Reopening Notice) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (IT Act), as unconstitutional, being violative of the ‘doctrine of separation of powers’ and thus violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India.

In this episode, Vshrupt examines the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s decision in Smt. Shanti Singh & Ors. v. State of Madhya Pradesh & Ors.

Former Chief Justice of India Justice B.R. Gavai recently joined Adv. Varun Singh, Founder and Managing Partner of Foresight Law Offices India, for an insightful discussion on the Indian judiciary, constitutional values, judicial leadership and the future of legal practice

An analysis of the constitutional validity of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, examining Article 324, Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, procedural safeguards and the Supreme Court’s decision in Association for Democratic Reforms v. ECI.

On May 29, 2026, the Delhi High Court delivered a landmark judgment in a batch of petitions that raised the same question, that stood at the intersection of constitutional law and the digital age viz. whether an individual whose name appears in judicial records that are accessible through internet search engines is entitled, by virtue of the right to informational privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution, to seek de-indexing of those records from name-based search results and masking of personal identifiers (including names) from publicly accessible digital versions of those records.

The Supreme Court of India’s orders on stray dog management in Delhi-NCR during August 2025 sparked considerable debate. In Re: “City hounded by Strays, Kids Pay Price”, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 16881, the Court initially directed the blanket removal of stray dogs, a measure that conflicted with existing statutory schemes.