Author: admin

The recent voluntary filing for insolvency by Go First Airlines has led to the imposition of a moratorium under §14 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. This has also affected all of Go First’s fifty-three leased aircraft. In the absence of any specialised framework governing airline insolvency, the moratorium has disabled lessors from repossessing their aircraft, tarnishing India’s image in the international aviation market. In response, the government exempted such leased assets from the moratorium under §14(c) of the Code via a notification dated October 3, 2023. This move also clears space for the passage of the long overdue Cape Town Convention Bill, 2018, aimed at ratifying the Cape Town Convention. More importantly, it poses policy questions regarding the legislative options available to the government with regard to dealing with the impending question of repossession upon insolvency. This article, firstly, provides an overview of the aviation industry itself; secondly, it analyses the extant legal regime governing the repossession of aircraft in the event of airline insolvency, including the recent changes to the law; thirdly, it evaluates available policy alternatives to resolve the conundrum and concludes by suggesting an alternative that suits the Indian aviation sector.

The interface between competition law and sports has been gathering increasing prominence in recent years, propelled by commercialisation and rising viewer interest. This interface often arises in the form of unrecognised private competitions and the regulator’s attempts to flex its power by threatening to sanction players who participate in such tournaments. Two recent major cases in the European Union (‘EU’), European Superleague Company v. Fédération internationale de football association (‘Superleague’) and Union of European Football Associations, and International Skating Union v. European Commission (‘ISU’) have transformed this interface and have laid down a pathway for the future. While these cases have been transformative for EU competition law, there are also lessons that Indian competition law can draw from them. These pertain to the legitimate objectives that regulators must protect, the lifetime of players, and the commercial viability of the sport. Each of these has significant areas of competition analysis that remain underutilised in India at present, leading to a missed opportunity. Therefore, it is argued that the incorporation of the EU’s analysis in the Superleague and ISU cases stands to enrich Indian competition law analysis.

Cryptocurrencies have become increasingly popular in India. To transfer and store their cryptocurrencies, users rely on platforms or applications known as crypto exchanges. However, the exact contours of the legal relationship between the users and the exchanges remain unclear. Other jurisdictions have classified this relationship in a variety of different ways such as a trust, debtor-creditor relationship or even creating new innovative concepts like control-based proprietary interest. However, this paper argues that considering the Indian contractual framework, this relationship can be best classified as a bailment. The paper also attempts to provide a normative justification for this claim by highlighting its utility in scenarios where crypto exchanges go insolvent.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has always been vested with the jurisdiction of delineating the relevant market in cases of abuse of dominance. However, recently, in the case of Telefonaktiebolaget Lm Ericsson (Publ) v. Competition Commission of India, it was held that the Patents Act, 1970 and the courts would prevail over the CCI in the assessment of the rights of a patentee. Within the case text, one of the contentions that ultimately paved the path for such a detrimental ruling was that the calculation of Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory rates (‘FRAND’) does not require the delineation of a relevant market and hence, the CCI does not exercise jurisdiction over it. However, figuring out a rightful FRAND rate (which deters the abuse) depends entirely on the comparative analysis of substitutes of a product in a given relevant market since such a rate cannot be fixed arbitrarily and has to be equal for all licensees. Hence, in this article, the authors argue that the jurisdiction of the determination of licensing royalties in the cases of abuse of dominance by a patent holder lies with the CCI alone.

The recent legal vendetta of Supriya Chakraborty v. Union of India (‘Supriya Chakraborty’) yearns for the recognition of the right to marriage equality through a judicial reinterpretation of various personal and secular laws. Curiously, the respondents have argued that the Supreme Court’s declaration on this matter would trespass into the realm of the Legislature, challenging the sacred principle of separation of powers and endangering the Constitution’s Basic Structure. This essay contends that the respondents’ argument bears considerable merit since the higher judiciary has defiantly stepped beyond its conventional boundaries, venturing into the domains traditionally reserved for the legislature and executive. Nevertheless, the quest for resolving India’s separation of powers conundrum leads this essay to open the door to the Basic Structure doctrine’s application to judicial review — an expansion of scope that neither defies nor eludes possibility — thanks to the Supreme Court’s adept utilisation of the doctrine to review ordinary legislation and executive action. Building upon this, to counter the innate drawbacks of the traditional options available to the Supreme Court in Supriya Chakraborty, the essay proposes a balanced approach: blending the doctrine’s application to Judicial Review with the finesse of dialogic constitutionalism.