13 April 2020
An Executive Emergency: India’s Response to Covid-19
India’s response to Covid-19 has been large in scale, and far-reaching. The country is, at present, under a twenty-one day national “lockdown”, with a near-complete restriction upon the movement of people, the closure of all establishments except those providing “essential services”, and the regular “sealing” of neighbourhoods and areas that are suspected to be Covid-19 hotspots. To understand the legal framework underpinning all of this, it is important to first note that India is a federal republic, with a parliamentary democracy that operates under the framework of a written Constitution, and whose Courts formally exercise powers of judicial review over legislative and executive action. The response to Covid-19, therefore, involves multiple levels of government, and multiple institutional actors. Continue reading >>
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