"Let’s send a woman to jail for a day for speaking her mind?"

That’s what the Supreme Court did when Arundhati Roy protested against the court’s verdict on constructing the Narmada Dam.

So can the courts enforce silence? Unfortunately, yes. While in the USA and the UK, freedom of speech is prized above concerns of lowering the dignity of the court, in India, the courts have broadened the grounds under which a person can be criminally prosecuted on the charge of ‘contempt of court’.

We also look at the shift in the interpretation of slum dwellers' right to life and livelihood, which paved the way for the greatest slum demolition drive in New Delhi.

As well as the invention of the ‘collegium’ by the Supreme Court in 1993.

The Slum Demolition Drive in New Delhi

1. Ghertner, Ashner, T., 2015, Rule by Aesthetics: World-Class CIty Making in Delhi (Oxford University Press).

2. Bhuwania, Anuj, 2016, Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India, (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press).

3. https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/re-arundhati-roy/

On judicial independence:

1. Sengupta, Arghya and Ritwika Sharma, 2018, Appointment of Judges to the Supreme Court of India: Transparency, Accountability and Independence (Delhi: OUP)

2. Krishna, Justice B. N (retd.) 2016, “Judicial Independence”, in Choudhry, Sujit (et al), The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution, (OUP: New Delhi).

On Aadhar

1. https://thewire.in/law/aadhaar-verdict-money-bill-rajya-sabha

On Contempt of Court

1. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/339109/

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