Afternoon Pulse: A judge's illness pushes the Delhi protest reckoning to Thursday

The courtroom showdown we flagged this morning will now happen on Thursday. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana deferred the batch of pleas on the Delhi protests to October 15, PTI (via ThePrint) and LiveLaw reported. The reason was not legal. Justice Mohana was unwell but had still come to court, the Chief Justice told lawyers.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta asked for the adjournment on health grounds, and senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, for the petitioners, agreed. Both reports say the parties raised no objection to the new date.

The deferral also bought the government time. Today was the deadline for the Union Home Secretary, the Delhi Police Commissioner and the Delhi Metro chief to answer the contempt plea and file a compliance report on the court's order against a complete halt of metro and train services before the October 10 protest. Mehta told the bench the affidavit was ready but that he wanted to make it more comprehensive, PTI reported. The court extended the deadline to Thursday and directed that the affidavit be shared with the petitioners' lawyers. LiveLaw said the extension also covers the reply to Menaka Guruswamy's petition on detentions. So the question of whether last week's closures defied the court stays open for two more days.

The Supreme Court Bar Association's plea on lawyers' detention, which was listed today before the Chief Justice's bench, was not separately reported as heard. Neither report recorded any arguments on it, and it appears to have moved with the rest of the protest batch. We will confirm on Thursday.

The opposition's own petition is still stuck at the registry. We found no report this morning that the INDIA bloc had fixed the 14 defects flagged in the plea filed by Rahul Gandhi and ten other leaders, or that it had a hearing date. ANI's report on the defects, published this morning, carries no listing date and no comment from the Congress. The petition seeks an interim suspension of the Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls and a judge-led audit of the Election Commission's databases.

The Commission has still not answered. We could find no statement from it, or from Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, responding to the demand that he resign or to Rahul Gandhi's claims about his messages. Nor have the Delhi Police published the operating rules for protests at Ramlila Ground, CBD Ground and Burari Ground, which their October 11 order promised.

Across town, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi. He described India as a country that grows alongside others, and he called it the "Mother of Democracy", Business Standard and Revoi reported. He cited 7.8% growth in the April-June quarter, forex reserves above $700 billion and the merger of 29 labour laws into four codes. In a week dominated by charges against an election watchdog, he also pointed to India's open public debate. His critics are unlikely to let that line pass quietly.

Markets had a calmer morning than the courts. The Sensex was up about 463 points at 72,388 and the Nifty at 22,513 just after noon, Business Standard reported, a rebound from Monday's fall of nearly 550 points. IT stocks led the gains as TCS and HCLTech rose after quarterly results, and the volatility index fell. HDFC Sky's opening report said easing oil prices and the Reserve Bank's steps to support the rupee lifted sentiment, though Brent crude still traded above $105 a barrel.