Advocate Street

Constitution bench of SC to hear Triple Talaq cases from May 11 A five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court will start hearing from May 11 petitions against the Islamic divorce practice of triple talaq that is said to be biased against women. The court will hear pleas filed several Muslim women challenging the practice under which men can divorce their wives instantly by uttering the word talaq (divorce) thrice.Triple talaq has faced repeated legal challenges in recent years, and the government has said it wants to replace it with a new uniform civil code applicable to all religious groups. But that proposal has met stiff opposition from Muslim groups, who argue that it would discriminate against them. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also thrown his weight behind triple talaq reform, saying it was his administration’s duty to ensure the rights of Muslim women were upheld. India has separate sets of personal laws for each religion governing marriage, divorce, succe...

Nine-year-old girl files lawsuit against Indian Government over failure to take ambitious climate action A nine-year-old girl has filed a court case against the Indian Government for failing to take ambitious action to tackle climate change. Ridhima Pandey’s lawyer told The Independent she was a “compassionate child” who wanted her Government to help protect the planet for future generations. The northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, where Ridhima lives, has been devastated in the past three years by heavy rains, flash floods and frequent landslides, estimated to have killed thousands of people. And Ridhima has argued that India, the world’s third carbon emitter, has failed to put into action the promises it made in signing and ratifying the Paris Agreement on climate change. According to the World Bank, climate change will exacerbate the stress on India’s water sources, and the country is expected to suffer major health crises. The case includes allegations ...

Adoption is an underutilized option that can not only give happiness to a childless couple but also provide a future for an orphan child Background Surrogacy is when a woman carries a baby for another couple and gives up the baby at birth. In the past decade, commercial surrogacy has grown tremendously in India. It is currently estimated to be a $2-billion industry. Before November 2015, when the government imposed a ban, foreigners accounted for 80 per cent of surrogacy births in the country. This is because most countries, barring a few such as Russia, Ukraine and some U.S. states, do not permit commercial surrogacy. Many countries in Europe have completely prohibited surrogacy arrangements, both to protect the reproductive health of the surrogate mother as well as the future of the newborn child. The Trigger In 2008 The debate began when, in 2008, a Japanese doctor couple commissioned a baby in a small town in Gujarat. The surrogate mother gave birth to a healthy baby g...