LIJDLR

Volume IV Issue II

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FREE-AI COMMITTEE REPORT

Volume IV Issue II /

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FREE-AI COMMITTEE REPORT Neelansh Rao, Advocate at District court (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.222 Artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning and generative AI, is transforming financial services by improving customer engagement, credit assessment, risk management, fraud detection, and operational efficiency. Its growing deployment, however, also creates material concerns relating to data protection, operational resilience, market integrity, cybersecurity, and model governance. Against this background, the Reserve Bank of India constituted the Committee on the Framework for Responsible and Ethical Enablement of Artificial Intelligence (FREE-AI) to formulate a comprehensive framework for responsible AI adoption in the financial sector. The Committee’s Report advances seven guiding “Sutras” and six strategic pillars. The pillars combine innovation enablement through infrastructure, policy, and capacity with risk mitigation through governance, protection, and assurance. This paper undertakes a comparative legal and policy analysis of the FREE-AI recommendations alongside the regulatory approaches of the European Union and Singapore. It uses a doctrinal and comparative method to examine their respective approaches to AI governance, accountability, transparency, consumer protection, data governance, audit, and innovation across the AI lifecycle. The comparison identifies convergences in governance, transparency, and consumer protection, but differences in regulatory design and implementation. The analysis finds that the FREE-AI framework seeks to balance financial innovation with safeguards for fairness, explainability, security, and systemic stability. While the European Union adopts a more prescriptive, risk-based regime and Singapore relies substantially on principles- and guidance-based supervision, the Indian framework offers a sector-specific, phased model designed to support responsible deployment by regulated entities. The paper argues that its effectiveness will depend on clear supervisory standards, institutional capacity, reliable data governance, and robust assurance mechanisms.

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ILLEGAL STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS: STATUTORY PROVISIONS AND JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION

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ILLEGAL STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS: STATUTORY PROVISIONS AND JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION Anushka Maharshi, BA.LLB, 9th Semester, Student at Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.221 This article examines the statutory regulation of strikes and lockouts in Indian industrial-dispute law, using the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 (IDA) as its principal doctrinal framework. It advances the central argument that judicial treatment of “illegal” and “unjustified” strikes, and of employer lockouts, has not been conceptually uniform, creating uncertainty over procedural compliance, proportionality, wage consequences and the permissible limits of collective action. Through a doctrinal analysis of the definitions in sections 2(q) and 2(l), the restrictions in sections 22 and 23 and the illegality rule in section 24, the article assesses the interaction among notice, conciliation, adjudication and industrial action. It engages with Kameshwar Prasad v State of Bihar, Crompton Greaves Ltd v Its Workmen, Tata Iron & Steel Co Ltd v Their Workmen, and related decisions to distinguish statutory illegality from factual justification, scrutinise the legality of lockouts, and evaluate the requirement of proportionate disciplinary responses. A comparative examination of the United Kingdom and the United States identifies the value of clear procedural standards, effective conciliation and protected lawful collective action, while preserving continuity in essential services. The article finds that the IDA’s formal restrictions, ambiguity surrounding employer countermeasures and delay-prone dispute-resolution processes can disproportionately constrain workers, especially when bargaining channels fail. It therefore recommends precise statutory definitions, calibrated notice requirements, strengthened independent conciliation, sector-sensitive continuity arrangements and accessible legal-awareness measures. These proposals seek to reconcile industrial peace with meaningful protection for workers and employers. As the Industrial Relations Code 2020 has subsumed the IDA and is now in force, the article situates the older statute’s jurisprudence as an indispensable interpretative foundation for the contemporary framework. Its contribution lies in offering a structured approach to reconciling legality, justification and proportionality in strike and lockout disputes.

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DIGITAL EVIDENCE, AI, AND CRIMINAL TRIALS IN INDIA: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

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DIGITAL EVIDENCE, AI, AND CRIMINAL TRIALS IN INDIA: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS Puneet Kumar Rastogi, B.A.LL.B.(H), 9th Semester, Student at Faculty of Law, University of Allahabad (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.220 The operational framework of criminal investigations and trials in India is undergoing a structural transformation due to rapid advances in consumer electronics, cloud storage, encrypted communications, algorithmic databases, and artificial intelligence. Investigating agencies increasingly rely on data drawn from remote servers, mobile devices, transient messaging platforms, automated forensic systems, and synthetic-media environments to reconstruct criminal conduct. This paper undertakes a doctrinal and constitutional critique of the statutory framework governing electronic evidence under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA), particularly the admissibility regime created by Section 63 and the certificate mechanism under Section 63(4). It argues that the BSA modernizes Indian evidence law by placing electronic records within the mainstream of documentary proof and by introducing clearer distinctions between primary and secondary electronic evidence. However, the paper also finds that the dual-certification model, while improving reliability through custodian and expert validation, may create practical burdens for police agencies and forensic laboratories unless supported by adequate infrastructure and standardized procedures. The analysis further examines the evidentiary risks posed by artificial intelligence, deepfakes, opaque forensic software, and machine-generated outputs. It contends that metadata verification and hash-value integrity, though essential, are insufficient where synthetic media is created as an original digital file. In such cases, courts must demand deeper forensic scrutiny, source-code accountability, error-rate disclosure, and algorithmic transparency. The paper concludes that Article 21’s guarantee of fair trial and due process requires a right to meaningful challenge against automated or AI-assisted evidence, ensuring that technological efficiency does not override constitutional safeguards in Indian criminal trials.

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REGULATORY SEQUENCING AND ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDY OF BANKING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM IN INDIA, THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, JAPAN, AND BRAZIL

Volume IV Issue II /

REGULATORY SEQUENCING AND ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDY OF BANKING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM IN INDIA, THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, JAPAN, AND BRAZIL Mr. Susen Kamble, LL.M (Constitutional and Administrative Law), Student at National Law Institute University, Bhopal (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.219 This article examines whether the sequencing and design of regulatory reform, rather than the ideological choice between regulation and deregulation, determines institutional durability and consumer-welfare outcomes. It employs a structured comparative-doctrinal method, analysing enabling legislation, regulatory mandates, appellate arrangements, judicial decisions, agency materials, and multilateral institutional assessments. The study compares India, the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Brazil between 1980 and 2025, with banking and telecommunications as its two principal sectors; energy and transportation are used only as contextual comparators. The article advances three propositions. First, reforms that establish operationally independent regulators with technical capacity and effective appellate oversight before competitive market opening are more likely to yield durable outcomes than reforms that liberalise first and regulate later. Second, regulatory capture is a systemic institutional risk requiring structural, rather than exclusively procedural, safeguards. Third, Indian regulatory law is broadly capable of supporting adaptive governance but retains identifiable gaps in accountability, independence, and anti-capture design. By disaggregating the regulation–deregulation binary into sequencing, agency independence, appellate architecture, stakeholder engagement, anti-capture safeguards, and adaptive capacity, the analysis identifies institutional combinations associated with resilient regulatory systems. The comparative findings support a reform agenda centred on pre-liberalisation institutional investment; transparent, independent data capacity; fixed and protected regulatory appointments; cooling-off restrictions; and stronger legal protection for the autonomy of systemically significant agencies. For India, the article recommends circumscribing executive direction powers and considering enhanced constitutional or other higher-order legal safeguards for key regulators. The analysis is deliberately doctrinal and institutional, not econometric: it does not claim to establish universal causal effects or measure sectoral outcomes exhaustively. Its conclusions are therefore limited to the five selected jurisdictions, the two primary sectors, and the 1980–2025 period. Within those limits, the article offers a transferable framework for evaluating regulatory reform.

REGULATORY SEQUENCING AND ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDY OF BANKING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM IN INDIA, THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, JAPAN, AND BRAZIL Read More »

WHEN LAW TRANSCENDS ETHICS: THE SHIFTING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEGAL NORMS, MORAL REASONING, AND SOCIAL NECESSITY

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WHEN LAW TRANSCENDS ETHICS: THE SHIFTING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEGAL NORMS, MORAL REASONING, AND SOCIAL NECESSITY Drishya Srivastava, LL. B (H), 6th Semester, Student at C.M.P. Degree College Affiliated to University of Allahabad (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.218 Throughout recorded history, legal obligation and moral expectation have rarely occupied perfectly coincident territory. Ancient societies tended to ground their regulatory frameworks in religious or philosophical authority, creating the appearance and often the functional reality of unity between the legal and the moral. That picture has since undergone a decisive transformation. Contemporary legal systems are shaped by parliamentary bargaining, judicial interpretation, constitutional text, and institutional inertia, none of which is reducible to any single community’s moral outlook. This paper traces that transformation. Its central argument is that while law was historically conceived as derivative of moral order, it has progressively established an authority of its own—one that not only operates independently of prevailing ethical consensus but, in certain contexts, actively overrides it. This development is not lamented here as a pathology of modern governance. In societies marked by deep and irreducible moral pluralism, law’s capacity to function without requiring unanimous ethical agreement is precisely what allows it to serve as a shared framework for coexistence. The paper surveys this dynamic across several domains’ reproductive rights, end-of-life decision-making, criminal punishment, and digital privacy drawing primarily on Indian, British, and American legal experience. It engages with the principal theoretical accounts of the law-morality relationship, from classical natural law theory through Hartian positivism to the Indian Supreme Court’s distinctive doctrine of constitutional morality. Recent developments including the reversal of constitutional abortion protections in the United States and the ongoing operationalisation of data protection regimes in India and Europe illustrate with fresh urgency how quickly law’s relationship to prevailing ethical consensus can shift. The conclusion advanced is that law’s institutional independence from ethics, while real and significant, does not dissolve law’s responsibility to remain open to ethical scrutiny, critique, and reform.

WHEN LAW TRANSCENDS ETHICS: THE SHIFTING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEGAL NORMS, MORAL REASONING, AND SOCIAL NECESSITY Read More »

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE ERA OF GENERATIVE AI AND DEEP LEARNING

Volume IV Issue II /

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE ERA OF GENERATIVE AI AND DEEP LEARNING Aditi Gupta, B.A. LLB. (H), 10th Semester, Student at S.S. Khanna Girls Degree College (India) Kumar Prabhakar, B.A. LLB. (H), 10th Semester, Student at Presidency University, Bangalore (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.217 In the era of technological advancement and generative AI and deep learning, the authors of the paper focused on the research study that addresses the research problems including lawful unreliability encircling authorship, possession, potential for exclusive rights, and violation driven by contents and inventions generated by AI. The authors’ research objective aims to assess the legal frameworks for intellectual property specifically in relation with patent law and Indian copyright frameworks. Through this analysis, adequacy is measured in regulation of algorithmically generated content and solutions in the lack of AI regulations. The scope of the study is restricted to copyright and patent involvement of Generative AI with deep learning technologies, that integrates the use of licensed and confidential data in the process of training of AI, acknowledgement of works that are AI generated, industry wide administrative responses. The authors adopted doctrinal and analytical method approach as the research methodology involving the statutory provision’s examination, judicial rulings, policy papers, scholarly articles, and sector practices are used to discover areas lacking regulation and difficulties in interpretation. The key findings and analysis of the paper indicate that present intellectual property regulations are highly aimed at humans and are not enough prepared to manage outputs from autonomous AI, as AI systems lack juristic personality, which results in ongoing hurdles regarding proprietorship, responsibility, and safeguard. Additionally, the research shows that using licensing content to train AI models carries major risks of infringement, leading to overreliance on contractual safeguards and self-regulatory mechanisms by online platforms. The document concludes that the rapid development of generative AI requires updates to legal frameworks, clearer policy directions, and a new understanding of creativity and originality to safeguard human intellectual efforts while promoting responsible tech growth.

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IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION POLICIES ON HUMAN RIGHTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH FOCUS ON INDIA

Volume IV Issue II /

IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION POLICIES ON HUMAN RIGHTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH FOCUS ON INDIA Pratibha Tewatia, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University, Gurugram, Haryana (India) Sanya Singh, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University, Gurugram, Haryana (India) Tanvi Jain, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University, Gurugram, Haryana (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.216 Growing movement across borders increasingly tests national laws aiming to uphold government authority while meeting global duties to protect people. India, notable for sending many abroad yet also receiving large numbers, faces challenges as its outdated rules fail to match modern patterns of forced or voluntary relocation. Whether present policies secure basic freedoms for those crossing into the nation – be they asylum seekers, displaced individuals without citizenship, or laborers – is explored here through local judicial principles alongside worldwide standards. Beginning with India’s present framework under the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, while situating the Foreigners Act, 1946 and related predecessor laws in their repealed historical context, the analysis then turns to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 and safeguards embedded within Article 21 of the Constitution. Instead of general assumptions, examination follows structure found across U.S., Canadian, and EU immigration models, then extends into policies practiced by several Middle Eastern nations. Rather than isolated rulings, judgments issued by India’s highest court align beside findings from global judicial bodies. Following this path, benchmarks originate in the 1951 Refugee Convention, tied further to foundational agreements drafted under UN authority on human rights. The results indicate that India’s laws on migration carry deep-rooted flaws – such as rules frozen in time, uneven application across regions, and shifting conditions for staying – which place at greater risk communities like the Rohingya along with people without legal status. Although key decisions by the Supreme Court have applied constitutional safeguards under Article 21 even to foreigners, hurdles built into processes still weaken actual ability to claim these protections. This work suggests fragmented court actions fail to address core issues; instead, coherence may emerge through legislation matching national policies to global human rights standards. A single legal structure could reflect such alignment more effectively than scattered rulings.

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LEGAL CHALLENGES OF AI-GENERATED CONTENT UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE

Volume IV Issue II /

LEGAL CHALLENGES OF AI-GENERATED CONTENT UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE Sanya Singh, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University Gurugram (India) Prerna Sihag, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University Gurugram (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.215 Artificial intelligence has changed how creative content is made — and Indian copyright law simply hasn’t caught up. The Copyright Act of 1957 was written with human creators in mind and is relatively silent when systems like GPT-4, Stable Diffusion, or Mid journey produce entire works independently. Who owns the output? Was training on copyrighted data even legal? The uncertainty is real, and its consequences are growing. This paper works through four questions: whether AI-generated works qualify for protection under Indian law; who holds authorship and ownership rights; when training AI on copyrighted material becomes infringement; and whether Section 52’s fair dealing provisions can realistically handle generative AI. It draws on doctrinal analysis and compares India’s approach against the US, EU, UK, Japan, and Singapore. The gaps are hard to ignore. No data mining exception, no framework for computer-generated authorship, no deepfake legislation — courts are stretching decades-old rules over problems they were never meant to solve. Though the ANI Media case against OpenAI highlights mounting pressure, no single verdict can resolve deep-rooted flaws. A judge’s decision might clarify legal boundaries – yet systemwide issues remain untouched. For India, progress means rethinking copyright with precise guidelines on who made what. Licensing systems for data used in machine learning could follow. Clearer expectations around disclosure might support artists while keeping new ideas flowing. Rules should balance fairness and invention, nothing more. The paper recommends a calibrated statutory framework that preserves protection for demonstrable human creative contribution, clarifies ownership where AI functions as a tool, introduces a limited and transparent data mining/licensing mechanism for training datasets, and strengthens disclosure duties for AI-assisted works. Such reform would better balance creator protection, legal certainty and innovation in India’s emerging AI economy.

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ETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICES: THE UNBREAKABLE TRINITY OF CORPORATE CULTURE, INTEGRITY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Volume IV Issue II /

ETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICES: THE UNBREAKABLE TRINITY OF CORPORATE CULTURE, INTEGRITY AND SUSTAINABILITY Komal Muskan Pandita, LL.M (Corporate Law), Student at Amity University (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.214 Ethical business practices have moved from the periphery of corporate governance to its normative and strategic centre. This paper examines how corporate culture, integrity, and sustainability operate together as the “Unbreakable Trinity” of responsible business conduct and argues that long-term profitability cannot be separated from legality, accountability, stakeholder trust, and social legitimacy. The research problem addressed is the continuing gap between formal compliance and substantive ethical governance, particularly where corporations satisfy minimum legal duties while failing to internalise ethical decision-making across management, reporting, technology, environmental performance, and human-rights responsibilities. Adopting a doctrinal and analytical methodology, the paper evaluates international standards such as the United Nations Global Compact, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the TRIPS framework, alongside Indian legal instruments including the Companies Act, 2013, SEBI’s Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements Regulations, CSR obligations, ESG disclosures, and business responsibility reporting. The study further draws upon comparative and Indian case studies, including Satyam, Enron, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, Vedanta, and Tata Consultancy Services v. Cyrus Investments, to demonstrate how ethical failure produces legal sanctions, reputational harm, investor distrust, and institutional instability. The paper’s central finding is that corporate culture shapes behaviour, integrity directs behaviour, and sustainability preserves the legitimacy of business activity over time. It contributes to corporate law scholarship by presenting ethics not as a voluntary moral aspiration, but as a governance imperative that strengthens compliance, stakeholder confidence, digital accountability, environmental responsibility, and sustainable corporate competitiveness.

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A DECADE OF THE BENAMI TRANSACTIONS (PROHIBITION) AMENDMENT ACT, 2016 CRITICAL EVALUATION OF ITS EFFECTIVENESS IN INDIA

Volume IV Issue II /

A DECADE OF THE BENAMI TRANSACTIONS (PROHIBITION) AMENDMENT ACT, 2016 CRITICAL EVALUATION OF ITS EFFECTIVENESS IN INDIA Mr. Sushrut Khadse, BBA LLB, 7th Semester, Student at Symbiosis Law School, Nagpur (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.213 The Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016 was enacted for strengthening Indian legal framework against Benami transactions which have been linked with black money, tax evasion, corruption. While the original Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act,1988 prohibited such transactions but it lacked effective enforcement mechanisms and remained largely ineffective for 3 decades. The 2016 amendment introduced comprehensive definitions, specialized authorities, confiscation procedures, appellate mechanisms and strict penalties. This research evaluates the effectiveness of the Act during the decade from 2016 to 2026. It examines the evolution of benami law in India the enforcement measures adopted by the Government the role of specialized institutions and the impact of judicial interpretation on the implementation of the legislation. The study further analyses the contribution of technological initiatives such as Bhu Aadhaar and Aadhaar linked land records in improving transparency and preventing benami transactions. The findings indicate that the Act has significantly enhanced the Government’s ability to detect and attach benami property. However, challenges such as procedural delays, constitutional limitations, judicial scrutiny and the complex ownership structure continue to affect its overall effectiveness. The study concludes that although the Act has not completely eradicated benami transactions or black money, it has emerged as an important instrument for promoting financial transparency and accountability. Continued institutional reforms, technological integration and inter agency coordination’s are essential for achieving the full objectives of the legislation.

A DECADE OF THE BENAMI TRANSACTIONS (PROHIBITION) AMENDMENT ACT, 2016 CRITICAL EVALUATION OF ITS EFFECTIVENESS IN INDIA Read More »