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A nine-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India on 11th November, 2016, upheld the demand of entry tax by states for allowing goods and raw materials to their territories. A 7:2 majority verdict by the apex court ruled that the tax legislation by the state does not require the approval of the President under Article 304 B of the Constitution.
The court stated that it did not restrict freedom of trade or other constitutional provisions on inter-state trade. However, the taxing measure should not be discriminatory and restrict entry of goods from other states.
The bench headed by Justice T.S Thakur held that states were well within their right to design their fiscal legislations to ensure that the tax burden on goods brought from other states and goods produced within the state fell equally.
The apex court also said that if a state imposes entry tax on products made within the state it was not empowered to impose higher tax on the identical products entering from other states. Following this judgment, the state governments will be richer by thousands of Crore rupees as a large number of companies have to pay past dues which were caught in litigation in various forums all over the country.
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The Supreme Court of India on September 19, 2016, heard a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in which Google, Yahoo and other search engines have been made a party for allegedly putting up advertisements selling pre-natal sex determination kits. The case was heard by a Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Amitava Roy in a PIL filed by Sabu Matthew George, against the usage of search engines to access results for sex selection.
According to a petition filed by activist Sabu Mathew George, a lot of content on the internet is in violation of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994. The apex court discussed the idea of blocking certain words and phrases from searches to stop people from accessing information to determine sex of a foetus.
The Apex Court also directed the Central Government of India to constitute a Nodal agency to keep a tab on keywords used on search engines to enable a system of 'auto-block' that would black out information on sex determination online in India. The order is in the nature of an interim order till February 17, 2017, which is when the matter is next listed for hearing.
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