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Amidst the countrywide euphoria over the successful air strikes on terror camps in Pakistan, the Supreme Court has opened a Pandora’s Box by agreeing to hold an open hearing on the review petitions calling for the recall of the verdict given by the apex court on December 14 last year. The decision of the SC bench headed by the Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi has extraordinary significance as it allows consideration by the bench of the points made by the petitioners that the December 14 judgment was based on the wrong and untruthful facts submitted by the Government in the sealed envelope to the Court.

New Delhi: India’s retaliatory strike on Pakistan’s terror camps in Balakote and some PoK regions have kept Delhi on the edge, literally. Its geographical proximity to Pakistan makes the national capital vulnerable to enemy air raids in times like these.

India’s promised response to Pulwama was at whatever speeds Mirage and Sukhoi fighter jets achieved early Tuesday morning and like a twin, Pakistan has sworn to return the compliment ASAP at a “time and place of its choosing”, a choice of words borrowed from the Indian armed forces. For now, Pakistan has decided to keep its nuclear threat in the silos and Prime Minister Imran Khan has chosen surprise and suspense to simmer.

Weekly Round-Up of Major Decisions of the Courts in India as also Legal Policy Developments

In one of the most regressive and anti-tribal actions, the Supreme Court has dealt a huge blow to the letter and spirit of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (‘Forest Rights Act’). On 13th February, 2019, the Supreme Court directed the 16 States to take action against those forest dwellers whose claims under the Forest Rights Act were rejected, and to evict them. The Court perused the affidavits filed by the States of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Manipur.

It was a heart-rending tragedy. When the news last came in, 145 poor tea garden labourers in Assam had lost their lives on 24 February 2019 and another 200 were struggling for their lives in the hospital—around 30 of them in a serious condition. A tragedy definitely preventable and it should not have occurred at all in the first place.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is back at his old game of street- level confrontation with the Union Government as part of his political strategy. This time he is going on an indefinite fast from March 1 to get full statehood for Delhi. Can he achieve his objective? It looks difficult because no party at the Centre wants to give full statehood to Delhi. In the last two decades both the BJP and the Congress parties have promised statehood but when they came to power at the Centre, the issue took a backseat. Delhi being a special state, land and law and order come under the Union Home ministry. The chief minister wants them under his government’s control but the Centre would never part with these powers, as there are several hiccups, financial and political.

The Prime Minister’s call for ending the targeting of Kashmiris living in other part of the country in the wake of the Pulwama outrage has come not a moment too soon. The young Shiv Sena leader, Aditya Thackeray, has also done well to sack those party workers who assaulted Kashmiris in Maharashtra.

In the backdrop of heinous terrorist attack killing 41 CRPF Jawans in Pulwama, the focus of entire nation has come back to Kashmir. The anger of India has propelled a war like sentiment against Pakistan. Multiple reactive measures by India have been taken out like withdrawing security of separatist leaders, taking back Most Favoured Nation (MFN) Status of Pakistan apart from creating international pressure on Pakistan. Since the attack was in a nature of its worst kind, the public anger displayed by voicing the sentiment to cut off all ties with Pakistan including cultural, sports and social along with an urge to give strong be-fitting reply to Pakistan which is not-less-than a military revenge. But this kind of sentiments and government actions are not new.

Ten days after the Pulwama attack by the suicide bomber leading to the death of more than forty CRPF personnel, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan issued a statement on Sunday urging the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to give peace a chance assuring that he would act immediately if India gives actionable intelligence on the attack. Imran earlier made such an offer but this time, his appeal was in response to the speech made by Narendra Modi on Saturday challenging him to stand true to his words and act against the terror outfits.