EduLaw Weekly Roundup | Saturday, 16 May 2026
EduLaw EditorialDaily Legal UpdatesEduLaw · Weekly Roundup The Saturday Brief For the week ending Saturday, the sixteenth of May, two thousand and twenty six Volume I · Issue 20 · The Week That Was A week in which the Supreme Court reserved verdict in the nine judge Sabarimala reference after sixteen days of hearing, ordered the release of a convict in the Madhumita Shukla case after twenty two years, pulled up the High Courts for sitting on reserved judgments, laid down timelines for the disposal of bail applications, and shielded officials of the Enforcement Directorate from state level first information reports, all while the Constitution Bench continued to test whether the Election Commissioners Appointment Act of two thousand and twenty three can stand on its present footing. I · The Opening Note The Week in One Sentence If one had to compress the seven days from Sunday the tenth to Saturday the sixteenth of May into a single sentence, it would be this: the Supreme Court of India spent the week measuring the institutional health of every other organ that touches the citizen, the High Courts on the pace of their judgments, the Election Commission on the manner of its appointment, the executive on the reach of its remission power, the state police on the limits of their writ over central agencies, and the examination authorities on the credibility of a single undergraduate test, and in each case it placed the question of independence and institutional dignity at the centre of its reasoning. That is the thread that ran through the week, and it is the thread we follow in this edition. Markets closed lower on Friday, the rupee weakened, fuel pump prices were revised upward for the first time at this magnitude since May two thousand and twenty two, and the Reserve Bank confirmed a ten billion dollar buy sell swap window in a continuing effort to manage onshore dollar liquidity without giving up the unified dollar rupee market it has spent two years constructing. Abroad, a vessel was seized near the coast of the United Arab Emirates and steered toward Iranian waters, and a Ukrainian drone strike on Ryazan killed three. The legal week, in other words, did not unfold in a calm world. ❦ ❦ ❦ II · The Supreme Court Desk The Apex Court in Review The remission jurisprudence settles a notch The week's most consequential criminal law ruling came on Friday, when a bench of the Supreme Court ordered the premature release of a convict in the two thousand and three Madhumita Shukla murder case after twenty two years in custody, holding that the heinousness of a crime, standing alone, cannot be a ground to deny remission where the convict has otherwise satisfied the statutory and policy conditions for early release. The Court emphasised, in language that will be repeated in remission petitions across the High Courts for the rest of the year, that reformation, and not retribution, should remain the guiding focus of the state when exercising its remission powers under the Code of Criminal Procedure and the corresponding provisions of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. Live Law's report carries the operative paragraphs, and the Economic Times covers the political backdrop. The judgment is significant less for its outcome than for the framing it confirms. The Court did not say that heinous crimes attract remission as a matter of course. It said that the gravity of the offence cannot do the work of every other factor that the Laxman Naskar line of cases requires the state to weigh, which includes the convict's age, the prospects of reformation, the conduct in custody, the views of the presiding judge of the convicting court, and the socio economic circumstances to which the convict will return. That framing closes off a route that several state governments have used in recent years, in which the heinousness of the underlying crime is invoked as a single dispositive reason to refuse remission, leaving the other Laxman Naskar factors unexamined. After Friday, that approach is harder to sustain. The Enforcement Directorate is shielded from state FIRs Earlier in the week the Court stayed first information reports registered by state police against officials of the Enforcement Directorate, protecting the named officers from coercive action while it examines the broader question of whether state agencies may register criminal cases against central investigative officials for acts performed in the discharge of their official duties. The stay continues a line of orders in which the Court has sought to insulate central agencies from what counsel for the Union has described, in earlier matters, as retaliatory state level prosecutions. The order is interim. The constitutional question, which is whether and to what extent prior sanction is required for the prosecution of central officers under the relevant provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, remains open. Legal Eagle's note carries the listing. The High Courts are told to deliver their reserved judgments On Monday a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi reserved judgment on the framing of draft guidelines for the High Courts to avoid delay in the pronouncement of reserved judgments. From the bench, the Chief Justice described the practice of allowing reserved judgments to sit unpronounced for months, in some cases for over a year, as an identifiable ailment that must be cured, and indicated that he would raise the matter at the next conference of High Court Chief Justices. 24Law carries the longer summary, and the Pioneer the political reading. The proposed guidelines, as discussed in open court, contemplate that a judgment reserved beyond a stated period should be brought to the notice of the Chief Justice of the concerned High Court, that the matter should be re listed for further hearing if it remains undelivered beyond a further period, and that the registry should publish, at fixed intervals, a list of judgments reserved by each bench. Whether the final order will adopt that framework or some variant of it will be known when the bench pronounces. For now, the signal is that the Supreme Court intends to treat the timeliness of judgments not as a matter of judicial discretion alone but as a matter of institutional discipline. Bail applications must move within fixed windows In the same week, the Court in Sunny Chouhan versus State of Punjab issued a set of directions designed to ensure faster disposal of bail applications across the High Courts. As reported by Live Law and India TV , the directions include the mandatory service of a copy of the bail plea on the Advocate General, the listing of fresh bail applications within one week of filing, and the structured monitoring of pendency. The Court framed the issue as one of personal liberty, observing that delay in the listing of a bail application is itself a deprivation, and that the High Courts cannot allow such matters to drift. The Sabarimala reference is reserved On Thursday, after sixteen days of hearing, a nine judge Constitution Bench reserved its verdict on the Sabarimala reference, which raises seven constitutional questions concerning the scope of religious freedom under Article twenty five, the limits of judicial intervention in matters of faith, and the doctrine of essential religious practices. Live Law carries the day sixteen report. The hearing began on the seventh of April. The seven questions referred to the larger bench by the five judge bench in two thousand and twenty include the interplay between the freedom of religion and the right of every individual to enter a place of public worship, the permissible scope of judicial review of religious practices, and the question of who may speak for a religious denomination when the denomination itself is internally divided. The bench's observations from the closing days of the hearing, as captured by Bar and Bench's live updates , suggest a careful drawing of lines. The Chief Justice is reported to have observed that if a religious practice is thrust upon the people, the Court may strike it down, while Justice Nagarathna is reported to have pressed senior counsel on the question of whether the Court can compel a denomination to change a practice that the denomination itself considers essential. The verdict, when it comes, will be among the most cited constitutional rulings of the decade. The Election Commissioners Appointment Act hearing continues The Constitution Bench hearing the challenges to the two thousand and twenty three Election Commissioners Appointment Act continued through the week. The bench reiterated, in oral observations captured by The Hindu , that free and fair elections are possible only if there are independent Election Commissioners, and indicated that it would consider whether a reference to a larger bench is warranted. Supreme Court Observer's day four report sets out the bench's reasoning on the reference question. The matter is part heard. No final order was passed this week. The NEET undergraduate petitions arrive By the end of the week, several petitioners, including the Federation of All India Medical Association, had moved the Court seeking a court monitored re examination of the NEET undergraduate paper alongside a prayer for the replacement or restructuring of the National Testing Agency. The petitions, summarised by the Hindustan Times and Mint , invoke what counsel describes as a systematic failure of the examination conducting body and seek judicial supervision of any fresh test. The matter is expected to be listed in the coming week. A note on the bench's tone Two of the week's smaller orders also deserve mention. On Monday, the Court refused to entertain writ petitions challenging the decision of the Supreme Court Board of Examination on the conduct of the All India Bar Examination, holding that the matter did not warrant interference under Article thirty two. On the same day, the Court urged the High Courts to constitute grievance redressal mechanisms for litigants, a small administrative direction whose practical effect on access to justice may be considerable if it is taken up in earnest. ❦ ❦ ❦ III · The High Court Desk From the State Capitals Bombay: a defamation order is modified The Bombay High Court modified its earlier order in a long running defamation suit, deleting references to the plaintiff's age and to a twenty year adjournment remark that had drawn public criticism, and re listed the matter for the fifteenth of July, two thousand and twenty six. The original order, which had purported to adjourn the suit to two thousand and forty six, was treated by the Court as a working note rather than a substantive direction, and the modification restored the matter to the active list. Law Street carries the operative portion of the modified order, and the High Court's recent orders page the formal record. Earlier in the week, the same Court passed orders on the disqualification of seven hundred and fifty seven schools, stayed a cluster redevelopment tender, and continued to hear the Maharashtra Slum Resident Association matter on its own motion. Delhi: share buybacks are not income The Delhi High Court held, in a ruling with substantial implications for corporate tax planning, that share buybacks do not constitute income in the hands of the recipient shareholder for the purposes assessed in the matter before it, offering meaningful tax relief to companies that have undertaken or are contemplating buyback programmes. A2Z Taxcorp carries the headline reasoning. The Court's published judgments dated the fifteenth of May, including writ petition criminal number one five seven seven of two thousand and twenty six, are available on the High Court's judgment portal . The week's cause list also included writ petition criminal number one five three nine of two thousand and twenty six, Puran Prasad versus the State of NCT of Delhi. Gujarat: contempt against a district judge The Gujarat High Court moved this week to initiate contempt proceedings against a district judge for remarks attributing improper influence by a senior High Court judge over junior members of the subordinate judiciary. The High Court characterised the comments as a direct attack on judicial independence and institutional dignity. The contempt petition, in the matter of Girishkumar Rameshchandra Soni versus the High Court of Gujarat through its Registrar General , is now on the cause list. A related plea by the suspended judge was dismissed. Bar and Bench carries the report. The contempt petition itself has been made public. Madras: the cybercrime notice on anti TVK posts is stayed The Madras High Court stayed a cybercrime notice issued in connection with anti TVK social media posts, citing freedom of speech concerns, and continued to hear the matter through the week. The order, reported by the New Indian Express , sits within a broader political backdrop in which the Supreme Court, in a separate matter, stayed a Madras High Court order that had restrained TVK MLA Sreenivasa Sethupathi from voting in the Tamil Nadu floor test, describing the High Court's order as atrocious. The Live Law round up for the thirteenth of May carries the operative passages. Calcutta: post poll violence is back before the Court The Calcutta High Court took up the matter of post poll violence, with the Chief Minister appearing in person and the Court directing the maintenance of law and order across the affected districts. Reports in the Indian Express and on NDTV set out the bench's observations on the responsibility of the state administration. The matter will continue to be heard. Karnataka and Punjab and Haryana The Karnataka High Court's cause list for the fifteenth of May included the hearing of an application for the production of a certified copy in a matter listed before Bench B, Hall nine. The Punjab and Haryana High Court confirmed an arbitral award in favour of Khadim India Limited, as reported by Scanx , in a ruling that turned on the limited scope of interference under section thirty four of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. ❦ ❦ ❦ IV · Judgment of the Week The Madhumita Shukla Remission Ruling If one were forced to select a single judgment from the week as the one most likely to be cited in the years that follow, it would be the Friday order of the Supreme Court in the Madhumita Shukla case. Madhumita Shukla, a poet from Lucknow, was murdered in May two thousand and three. The trial court convicted the accused in two thousand and seven. The conviction was affirmed by the Allahabad High Court and, in due course, by the Supreme Court. The convict had been in custody for twenty two years at the time the remission application reached the Supreme Court on appeal from the rejection by the state government. The state had relied, in refusing remission, principally on the heinous nature of the offence and on the public interest in continued incarceration. The bench, in setting aside that refusal and ordering release, made three points that are likely to define the doctrine for some time. The first is the question of factor weighting. The Court reiterated that remission decisions must be made on the basis of the Laxman Naskar factors, that is to say the age of the convict, the prospects of reformation, the conduct in custody, the views of the presiding judge of the convicting court, and the socio economic circumstances to which the convict will return. The heinousness of the crime is a relevant factor. It is not, the Court held, a factor that can do the work of all the others. The second is the question of the standard of reasoning. A state government refusing remission must give reasons that engage with each of the relevant factors. A refusal that recites the heinousness of the offence without engaging with the convict's conduct in custody, the presiding judge's view, and the prospects of reformation is, on the Court's reasoning, an unreasoned refusal. The judicial review of such a refusal can therefore be more exacting than the executive may have assumed. The third is the question of doctrine. The Court positioned its reasoning within a line that runs from Maru Ram versus Union of India , decided in nineteen eighty, through Laxman Naskar versus Union of India , decided in two thousand, to Mafabhai Motibhai Sagar versus State of Gujarat , decided in October two thousand and twenty four. The Maru Ram bench laid down that remission is an executive function but one that is amenable to judicial review where it is exercised arbitrarily. The Laxman Naskar bench set out the factors that must be considered. The Mafabhai Motibhai Sagar bench, in a judgment available on the Supreme Court website , addressed the question of what conditions may lawfully be imposed when remission is granted, and struck down a condition that the convict would behave decently for two years on the ground that it was impermissibly vague. Friday's ruling completes the picture by addressing the question of what reasons may lawfully be given when remission is refused. Reformation and not retribution should remain the focus of the state when it exercises its remission power. The heinousness of the offence is a factor. It is not, and cannot be, the only factor. Supreme Court of India, Madhumita Shukla remission ruling, 15 May 2026 (paraphrased from oral pronouncement, as reported by Live Law and the Economic Times) The practical effect on pending remission petitions is likely to be considerable. High Courts hearing writ petitions challenging the refusal of remission will now have a clearer standard against which to measure the state's reasons. State governments, in turn, will need to retool the manner in which remission applications are processed at the level of the sentence review board, the prison administration, and the home department. Whether that retooling actually occurs is a separate question. The doctrine, at any rate, is in place. ❦ ❦ ❦ V · Bench Watch The Judges and What They Said The week was, in a quiet way, a Surya Kant week. Presiding over multiple benches across Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the Chief Justice's voice was the most consistent one in the courtroom. On Monday, in the matter of reserved judgments in the High Courts, he described the practice of allowing such judgments to remain unpronounced as an identifiable ailment that must be cured, and indicated that he would raise the matter at the next conference of High Court Chief Justices. On Wednesday, in oral observations during the Sabarimala hearing, he is reported to have said that if a religious practice is thrust upon the people, the Court may strike it down, a remark that drew careful response from senior counsel on both sides. On Friday, in a separate matter referred to by The Wire , the Chief Justice made observations on the difficulties faced by unemployed young Indians, in the course of a matter touching on welfare and employment policy. Justice Joymalya Bagchi sat with the Chief Justice on the bench that reserved judgment on the High Court pronouncement guidelines. Justice B V Nagarathna, sitting on the nine judge Sabarimala bench, pressed senior counsel on the question of whether the Court can compel a religious denomination to alter a practice the denomination itself considers essential, a line of questioning that has run through her observations across the sixteen days of hearing. Justice Vikram Nath, who delivered the inaugural address at the judicial technology conference referenced in the Supreme Court press release of the ninth of April , continued to sit on benches dealing with technology related matters through the week. What emerges from a week of bench watching is that the present Court is less interested in dramatic doctrinal pronouncements than in the disciplined operation of the system. The pronouncement guidelines, the bail timelines, the remission framework, and the Election Commissioners Appointment Act hearing are all, in different registers, attempts to bring system level discipline to areas where the institution has been seen to drift. That is a particular kind of judicial project, and it has its own intellectual character. ❦ ❦ ❦ VI · Reserved and Pending What Is on the Stove Sabarimala Reference (nine judge Constitution Bench) Verdict reserved on 14 May 2026 after sixteen days of hearing. Seven constitutional questions on the scope of Article 25, essential religious practices, and the locus of a religious denomination. Reserved Judgments Guidelines (Surya Kant CJ and Bagchi J) Reserved on 16 May 2026. Draft guidelines for High Courts on the timely pronouncement of reserved judgments, including reporting and re listing thresholds. Election Commissioners Appointment Act, 2023 (Constitution Bench) Part heard. Bench considering whether a reference to a larger bench is warranted. Oral observations on the constitutional need for independent Election Commissioners. Sunny Chouhan v. State of Punjab (bail disposal directions) Directions issued on 11 May 2026. Mandatory service on Advocate General, listing of fresh bail applications within one week, structured monitoring of pendency. FAIMA and connected petitions (NEET undergraduate 2026) Filed during the week. Seek a court monitored re examination and the restructuring of the National Testing Agency. Likely to be listed in the coming week. ED officers FIR challenge (interim stay) Interim stay granted. Question of prior sanction for prosecution of central agency officers under the Prevention of Corruption Act and BNSS to be considered on merits. ❦ ❦ ❦ VII · The Doctrinal Thread Institutional Independence as the Week's Through Line One way to read a week of court reporting is as a series of unrelated incidents. Another way is to look for the question that the institution returns to even when it does not name the question explicitly. This week, that question was the independence and institutional dignity of the offices that the Constitution treats as load bearing. Consider the four matters that occupied the Court's attention. The Election Commissioners Appointment Act hearing turns on whether the present method of appointment, by a committee in which the executive holds a majority, can produce Election Commissioners who are independent in the sense that the Constitution requires. The Gujarat High Court contempt proceedings turn on whether a sitting district judge can be permitted to suggest, in public, that a senior High Court judge controls junior members of the subordinate judiciary without rendering the institutional hierarchy meaningless. The Supreme Court's intervention on reserved judgments turns on whether the High Courts can be permitted to sit on undelivered judgments without rendering the right of appeal nugatory. The bail disposal directions in Sunny Chouhan turn on whether the High Courts can allow bail applications to drift without rendering the writ of habeas corpus a slow moving form. Each of these is, on the surface, a different question. Read together, they are the same question asked of different offices. The question is whether the institution can do what the Constitution asks of it without being captured by the surrounding pressures, whether of the executive, of the senior judiciary, of the calendar, or of the case load. The Court's answer, in each matter, has been to attempt a structural fix: a guideline, a stay, a timeline, a contempt notice. None of these fixes is dramatic. Taken together they form a coherent project. The project has a name in constitutional theory, although the Court has not used the name this week. It is sometimes called institutional integrity, the idea that the offices the Constitution establishes carry obligations not just to perform their stated functions but to perform them in a manner that preserves the trust that makes the functions possible. The doctrine has roots in older Indian cases, notably S P Gupta versus Union of India , decided in nineteen eighty one, and the second and third judges' cases, and has been developed more recently in matters concerning the independence of the Lokpal, the Central Vigilance Commission, and the Information Commissioners. This week's orders fit within that doctrinal genealogy. Whether they will be read in that way depends on how the next several weeks of judgment writing unfolds. One footnote is worth adding. The Madhumita Shukla remission ruling, although it does not appear at first glance to belong in this conversation, in fact belongs to the same family. The Court's holding that the state must give reasons that engage with each of the relevant factors when refusing remission is an assertion that the executive function of remission, although discretionary, is bounded by an obligation to reason. The obligation to reason is itself a feature of institutional integrity. The doctrinal thread, in other words, runs through the criminal jurisprudence as well. ❦ ❦ ❦ VIII · The Regulator's Week SEBI, RBI, NCLAT, and the Convergence Project The securitisation alignment The Securities and Exchange Board of India proposed this week to align its securitisation framework with the regulations of the Reserve Bank of India, including a waiver of the twenty five per cent cap for RBI regulated entities, which would enable single asset deals to be listed. The Economic Times and The Hindu Business Line carry the contours. The consultation paper is open for comment. The proposal sits within a longer arc of regulatory convergence between the securities and banking regulators that has been underway since the joint task force on co lending and the harmonisation of resolution frameworks. The Religare insider trading final order SEBI also passed a final order in the matter of suspected insider trading in the scrip of Religare Enterprises Limited, concluding proceedings against certain entities named in the show cause notice. The order, available on the SEBI website , sets out the regulator's findings on unpublished price sensitive information, the trading pattern of the named entities, and the quantum of disgorgement. The order will, in the usual course, be available for appeal before the Securities Appellate Tribunal. The thirty day lag on educational market data In a smaller but consequential move, SEBI mandated a thirty day lag for market price data used in educational content, effective the first of July, two thousand and twenty six, replacing earlier conflicting rules. Kotak Neo's note sets out the operative requirement. The change is aimed at the proliferation of online courses and influencer led content that uses near live market data, and the regulator has framed the rule as an investor protection measure. SEBI's three drafts Earlier in the week, on the eleventh of May, SEBI also released three consultation drafts, including a paper on the review of the utilisation of interest or income from the Investor Protection Fund corpus of depositories. The drafts are catalogued at CAalley . The cumulative weight of these consultations indicates that the regulator is in a documentation heavy phase, which often precedes a substantive rule making cycle. The RBI's swap window The Reserve Bank, in the continuation of its monetary policy committee discussion, reaffirmed a ten billion dollar buy sell swap window in the onshore market and reaffirmed its commitment to a unified dollar rupee market. The swap, structured as a buy sell, allows the central bank to inject rupee liquidity in the near leg while contracting to reverse the leg at a forward date, which has the effect of managing onshore dollar liquidity without committing to a permanent change in the central bank's foreign exchange reserves. The instrument has been used several times in recent quarters and has become a standard feature of the central bank's liquidity toolkit. NCLAT and the insolvency docket The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal published a notice indicating that its hearing scheduled for the fifteenth of May stood cancelled, with matters to be re notified. Earlier in the month, the Tribunal had ended insolvency proceedings against Embassy Development, overturning an NCLT ruling that had initiated proceedings against the realty firm for a loan default, as reported by the Economic Times . In a separate matter, the Tribunal upheld an NCLT order on the distribution of funds from a resolution plan, rejecting a plea from five banks who had challenged the distribution to the State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank, as reported in the Economic Times . The Tribunal also continued to develop the interface between the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and securities regulation in matters concerning frozen demat accounts, summarised by Live Law . The convergence point Read together, the week's regulatory developments suggest a convergence project: SEBI and the RBI are moving, by stages, toward a harmonised treatment of securitisation, lending, and resolution; the NCLAT is settling the line between insolvency and securities regulation; and the central bank is using its liquidity instruments to keep the rupee anchored within a unified market. None of this is the kind of regulatory news that produces a headline. All of it is the kind of regulatory news that defines the operating environment for the next two years. ❦ ❦ ❦ IX · Policy and Diplomacy The Week in Government Kerala forms a government V D Satheesan was sworn in this week as Chief Minister of Kerala. Cabinet formation continued through the week, with the formal swearing in of the council of ministers expected on the eighteenth of May. Reports in The Hindu , the Hindustan Times , and the New Indian Express carry the cabinet arithmetic and the portfolio negotiations within the United Democratic Front. The transition follows a state election whose outcome was clearer than its margin, and the new government will inherit a fiscal envelope that has narrowed over the preceding three quarters. The Election Commission and Phase Three The Election Commission of India proceeded with Phase Three of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, covering sixteen states and three Union Territories. The revision exercise sits within a longer project of cleaning the electoral rolls in preparation for the cycle of state and general elections that lies ahead, and its operational details have been the subject of considerable discussion in civil society, including questions of accessibility for migrant workers and the elderly. The Prime Minister in the United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the United Arab Emirates produced a series of bilateral instruments this week, with implications for trade facilitation, investment protection, and energy cooperation. The visit comes in the context of the broader strategic recalibration of India's relationships across the Gulf, and follows the formalisation earlier this year of the trade arrangement with the United States, summarised by the White House fact sheet and Al Jazeera , under which tariffs on Indian goods were reduced from fifty per cent to eighteen per cent. West Bengal and the Calcutta proceedings The Calcutta High Court's directions on post poll violence, with the Chief Minister's appearance and the bench's directions on law and order, occupied a significant part of the political news cycle through the week. The matter remains before the Court. ❦ ❦ ❦ X · International Watch Beyond the Border The Strait of Hormuz A vessel was seized near the coast of the United Arab Emirates and steered toward Iranian waters, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency, escalating tensions in the Strait of Hormuz. The Associated Press and Euronews carry the operational details. The seizure has implications for Indian shipping, given the volume of Indian flagged and Indian crewed vessels that transit the Strait, and for crude prices, which firmed by the close of the week. Ukraine and Ryazan A Ukrainian drone strike on the Russian city of Ryazan killed three persons and damaged residential and industrial sites, in one of the more substantial cross border strikes of the week, as reported by Reuters . The week also saw a large scale Russian missile and drone strike on Ukrainian targets, summarised in The Guardian . The conflict's trajectory continues to shape global energy and grain markets. The United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States continued to weigh the executive policy on the turning away of asylum seekers at the southern border, summarised by the Catholic Review , and the broader question of presidential authority to redefine birth right citizenship, summarised by SCOTUSblog . The American court's project, as comparative law watchers will note, is in some ways the inverse of the Indian Supreme Court's project this week. Where the Indian Court has spent the week tightening the disciplines that bind its sister institutions, the American Court has spent recent terms loosening the disciplines that bind the executive. ❦ ❦ ❦ XI · Numbers of the Week The Week in Figures Sensex Close (Friday) 75,237.99 Down 160.73 points or 0.21 per cent Nifty 50 Close (Friday) 23,643.50 Down 46 points or 0.19 per cent Diesel Pump Price ₹ 90.67 / litre Revised on 15 May 2026 Petrol Pump Price ₹ 97.77 / litre Steepest single revision since May 2022 RBI Swap Window US$ 10 billion USD/INR buy sell, onshore Sabarimala Bench 9 judges · 16 days Verdict reserved on 14 May 2026 Madhumita Shukla Case 22 years Custody at the time of release order SIR Phase III Coverage 16 states · 3 UTs Special Intensive Revision rolling out ❦ ❦ ❦ XII · Quote of the Week From the Bench Free and fair elections can happen only if there are independent Election Commissioners. Constitution Bench, in the Election Commissioners Appointment Act, 2023 hearing, as reported by The Hindu A second remark deserves to sit alongside the first, for its institutional candour. In the matter of reserved judgments, the Chief Justice's observation that the delay in pronouncement is an identifiable ailment that must be cured is, in its own way, an admission that the system has been allowed to drift, and a commitment that it will not be allowed to drift further. Read together, the two remarks define the spirit of the week. ❦ ❦ ❦ XIII · The Week Ahead What to Watch from Monday The week beginning Monday, the eighteenth of May, opens with the formal swearing in of the Kerala council of ministers, the expected listing of the FAIMA and connected NEET petitions before the Supreme Court, and the continuation of the Constitution Bench hearing on the Election Commissioners Appointment Act. The Supreme Court is also expected to take up further matters in the second week of its summer schedule, including pending bail and remission petitions that will now be heard in the light of Friday's framework. On the regulatory side, the consultation period on the SEBI securitisation alignment paper continues, with comments due in the coming weeks. The RBI's monetary policy committee minutes from the fourteenth of May discussion are expected to be released, and will be parsed for the central bank's reading of the inflation trajectory in the wake of the fuel price revision. The Bombay High Court's defamation suit will return for hearing on the fifteenth of July, but several interlocutory applications in connected matters are likely to be listed in the coming week. The Gujarat High Court contempt proceedings against the suspended district judge will return on a date to be notified. The Delhi High Court will continue to publish its judgments on the fetch data portal, with several substantial corporate tax matters in the pipeline following Friday's share buyback ruling. Overseas, the United States Supreme Court is expected to issue further orders in the asylum policy matter, and the Ukraine conflict will continue to drive movement in crude prices and shipping rates, with consequences for the Indian fiscal arithmetic. ❦ ❦ ❦ XIV · From the Archives The Long View on Remission Friday's order in the Madhumita Shukla case sits at the end of a line of cases that, taken together, define the Indian law of remission. The line begins with Maru Ram versus Union of India , decided by a five judge Constitution Bench in nineteen eighty, which held that the power of remission under section four hundred and thirty two of the old Code of Criminal Procedure is an executive power but one that is bounded by the obligation to act reasonably and not arbitrarily. The line continues through Laxman Naskar versus Union of India , decided in two thousand, which set out the factors that the state must consider when deciding a remission application, factors that have been cited in virtually every remission case decided since. The line was developed further in Sangeet versus State of Haryana , decided in two thousand and twelve, which clarified the relationship between section four hundred and thirty two and section four hundred and thirty three A of the old Code, and in Union of India versus V Sriharan , decided by a Constitution Bench in two thousand and fifteen, which addressed the question of who holds primary jurisdiction over remission in cases involving the death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Most recently, Mafabhai Motibhai Sagar versus State of Gujarat , decided in October two thousand and twenty four and reported as twenty twenty four INSC eight hundred and six, addressed the question of what conditions may lawfully be imposed when remission is granted, and struck down a condition that the convict would behave decently for two years on the ground that it was impermissibly vague. Friday's ruling completes the picture by addressing the question of what reasons may lawfully be given when remission is refused. The Court's answer, that the heinousness of the offence cannot do the work of all the other Laxman Naskar factors, is the kind of doctrinal addition that does not produce a headline but does produce a shift in administrative practice. The next several years of remission litigation in the High Courts will be shaped by it. The deeper question, which the line of cases has been circling for four decades, is the relationship between the executive power of remission and the judicial power of sentencing. The executive power is constitutionally located in Articles seventy two and one hundred and sixty one of the Constitution, and in the statutory provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. The judicial power is located in the trial court's pronouncement of sentence and in the appellate court's affirmation or modification of it. The two powers operate on the same object, the sentence, but they answer to different standards. The executive power answers to the standard of administrative reasonableness. The judicial power answers to the standard of proportionality and the doctrine of sentencing. The line of cases from Maru Ram to Friday's ruling can be read as a sustained attempt to reconcile the two standards without collapsing one into the other. Whether that reconciliation has now been achieved, or whether the next case will reveal a fresh tension, is a question for the next decade. ❦ ❦ ❦ XV · Editor's Note On Reading the Week as a Whole It is tempting, in a week of court reporting, to treat each day as a separate occurrence and to move from order to order without pausing to ask what the orders have in common. The temptation is en