suresh babu kalarikkal

Legalities of Extra Working Hours and Working on a Holiday

Average working hours of employees in India are among the longest compared to global peers, according to a report by the National Sample Sample Survey Office (NSSO) in 2018. Workers in Indian cities worked for 53-54 hours and those in villages worked 46-47 hours in a week. The survey also indicated that rural women were…

Exhibiting Movies in Office

Many times, I received requests from colleagues and friends seeking legal opinion on showing a movie in their office premises. In most of the situations, it may be an exhibition of a documentary or a short film of social significance to a small gathering of employees. As a basic legal principle, a copyright is automatically…

Artificial Intelligence and Legal Function

These days it is one of the hot topics in Legal circles – alarming predictions of artificial intelligence (AI) replacing lawyers. How will AI, machine learning, and big data affect the legal system as technology improves? Algorithms pervade our lives today, from music recommendations to credit scores and now, to bail and sentencing decisions. There…

Negotiating an indemnification clause

Nearly every commercial contract will have an indemnification provision. Indemnity is a contractual obligation of one party to compensate the loss suffered by the other party due to an act or omission. It is no secret that indemnification provision in a contract can be difficult to read for an ordinary person. I have seen many…

How to Plan and Implement your CSR?

India is unique in mandating that organisations satisfying certain profitability, net worth and size thresholds are required to spend at least 2% of their net income on corporate social responsibility (CSR). The purpose of this blog is to give you a fair understanding of legal provisions pertaining to CSR implementation. In India, the concept of CSR…

India’s new maternity benefit Law: Progressive but partial cover?

Women working in the organised sector in India will now be entitled to paid maternity leave of 26 weeks, up from 12 weeks, as Indian Parliament passed a new law on 10th March 2017 that will benefit about 1.8 million women. The new enactment may ensure better maternal care and will encourage more women to join…

Possessing Old Notes an offence

There are no more serpentine queues outside Indian banks to exchange old ₹500 and ₹1000 notes subsequent to demonetisation during November 2016! Up to 97% of the demonetised bank notes have been deposited into banks, which have received a total of ₹14.97 trillion as of December 30, 2016 out of the ₹15.4 trillion that was demonetised….

Validity of E-signatures in India

Recently i received an email from one of the prospective clients for executing (signing) a non-disclosure agreement (which came as an attachment to the mail) by just sending a “yes, I agree” reply to the email. We felt this approach as an over simplification of a due process of execution and just a mail confirmation…

Non-competing clauses in Employment Contracts

Employee attrition continues to be a burning issue for all Indian IT companies. Through this blog, I tried to briefly analyze the legal validity of a non-competing clause in employment contracts. Employment contracts that restrain employees specifically in any manner have always been a subject matter of debate and, consequently, have come under immense scrutiny…