Insights

A dishonoured company cheque often leads to criminal complaints against every director on the board. Supreme Court case law draws clear lines between those who can be prosecuted and those who cannot. This paper sets out those lines for directors, independent directors and complainants.

In just over two years, the Supreme Court has turned the right to be informed of the grounds of arrest into a written, language-specific safeguard that applies to every offence. This paper traces that development, its consequences for investigating agencies and accused persons, and the question now heading to a larger bench.

Indian law treats post-employment non-competes as void, however reasonable they may look. The Delhi High Court restated this firmly in 2025. Yet employers are not without protection: restraints during employment, garden leave, confidentiality and carefully drawn non-solicitation clauses remain available.

Since 21 November 2025, twenty-nine central labour laws have given way to four Codes. With central rules now notified, the questions have moved from 'when' to 'how'. This paper identifies the changes that most affect cost, structure and dispute risk for employers.

In October 2024 the Supreme Court held that a building could qualify as 'plant' for input tax credit. Within months, Parliament retrospectively amended Section 17(5)(d) of the CGST Act from 1 July 2017. This paper examines what survives of the judgment and how taxpayers should position open claims.

India's data protection regime is being switched on in three stages. The Data Protection Board is already functioning, consent manager registration opens in November 2026 and the substantive obligations bite in May 2027. This paper sets out what each stage requires and where businesses usually underestimate the work.

Promoters who signed personal guarantees for corporate loans now face insolvency proceedings in their own name. The Supreme Court's 2023 ruling upholding Sections 95 to 100 of the IBC confirms the process is constitutional, and that the resolution professional's role is facilitative rather than adjudicatory.

Within eight months, the Supreme Court moved from holding unstamped arbitration agreements unenforceable to holding that stamping is a curable defect for the tribunal to address. The seven-judge ruling in In re Interplay restored the pro-arbitration balance, but parties still pay a price for poor stamping discipline.

The Constitution Bench in Cox and Kings v SAP India confirmed that a company which never signed an arbitration agreement can still be bound by it. The decision rests the doctrine on consent rather than corporate convenience, and that shift matters for how groups contract and litigate.

Five years after Patil Automation, the Supreme Court's 2025 ruling in Dhanbad Fuels has settled that a commercial suit filed without pre-institution mediation is liable to be rejected. The real contest has now shifted to what counts as 'urgent interim relief'.