Important cases heard in the Supreme Court on Monday, January 30:
* The controversy surrounding the Centre’s decision to block a BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots will be heard by the SC on February 6 with the Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju mounting an attack on the petitioners including TMC MP Mahua Moitra saying that this is how they “waste” precious time of the court.
* Delhi Police told SC that its investigation in a case of hate speeches made at religious assemblies in the national capital in 2021 was “substantially completed” and a final probe report would be filed shortly.
* SC said it would hear on February 3 a batch of pleas challenging controversial state laws regulating religious conversions due to interfaith marriages.
* Centre raised questions in SC over the locus standi of activist Teesta Setalvad’s NGO, ‘Citizens for Justice and Peace,’ in challenging controversial state laws regulating religious conversions due to interfaith marriages.
* In a setback to the Jalan-Fritsch consortium, new owners of cash strapped Jet Airways, SC upheld the NCLAT order to pay the unpaid provident fund and gratuity dues of former employees of the carrier.
* SC questioned the Centre’s application to recall the September 8, 2021 direction on the tenure of the director of Enforcement Directorate (ED) saying, “subsequent changes in law cannot be a ground for recalling or modifying an earlier court order”.
* SC judge Justice Surya Kant recused himself from hearing an appeal filed by the Punjab government against the high court order granting bail to former minister and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Bikram Singh Majithia in a drug case.
* SC said it would hear on February 6 a plea challenging the Madras High Court order which had refused to quash the guidelines for granting exemption to students from giving the Tamil language paper in class 10 board examination.
* SC said inherent powers of High Court under Section 482 of the Code Of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) should be exercised with care, caution and sparingly.
* SC observed two minutes of silence on ‘Martyrs Day’. All judges stood in silence halting proceedings till a bell was sounded to conclude it.
