Allahabad High Courtā€‹ issues show-cause notice to Universal Publisher Lexis-Nexis

ALLAHABAD: The Allahabad High Court has sought the stand of noted law book publisher Lexis-Nexis of Universal publishers for allegedly misleading the members of the bar and bench for not publishing up-to-date legal provisions along with the latest amendments of a particular law.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice Prakash Padia issued the show cause notice observing that a substantial time of the court was wasted owing to Lexis-Nexis failure to keep its publications up to date.

The bench issued the notice after coming across such a lacuna in the publisher's bare act edition of the 'The Societies Registration Act, 1860' during the adjudication of a plea by the managing committee of Arya Vidya Sabha, Budhana, Muzaffarnagar.

During the hearing on Thursday, the court found that the Uttar Pradesh government had amended section 4-B of 'The Societies Registration Act, 1860' in 2013.

However, during the course of hearing, when the court was going through the provisions of the act in the bare act published by Lexis-Nexis, it could not find any such amendment and had to go through various books published by other publishers to cross-check the amendment.

The court then observed, "The Universal Publisher Lexis-Nexis in the bare act titled as 'The Societies Registration Act, 1860' with the state amendment published in the year 2020, does not reflect the insertion of section 4-B in the Act by amendment carried out vide UP Act No 23 of 2013 as a result of which substantial time of court was wasted in going through different books to find out if the act was amended or not."

The court fixed April 12 as the next date of hearing in the case.