Manupatra is a comprehensive database of the law of India. In contains federal Supreme Court decisions, state high court decisions, court rules, decisions of various administrative tribunals and commissions, federal and state statutes, rules and regulations, pending federal bills and parliamentary committee reports, databases of materials related to business enterprises and corporate taxation, secondary materials comprising commentaries and e-books, as well as cases and statutes from a variety of other countries, including Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Pakistan, South Africa, and Sri Lanka, among others.
The Jerome Hall Law Library has one subscription for Manupatra, so first time users will need to visit the library to get the username and password. And please remember to log out when you are finished with your research!
Naturally, if you have a more specific search topic in mind, you can construct a more precise search. For example, you know that the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009, enacted under Article 21(A) of the Constitution, states that "The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine." You also know that Constitution Article 30(1), states that "All minorities whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice." At first glance, these two seem to be at odds with one another, so to find out how they play out in practice you could search (without quotation marks) "unaided minority right to education". This search would retrieve 83 decisions of the Indian Supreme Court, with the most relevant cases at the top of the results list.
Manupatra allows you to print or download documents you retrieve. For statutes, this means that you can download the entire text of the statute, rather than just individual sections.
How you search Manupatra depends on what information you have and what information you need. The most basic search is a "Manu Search," which permits you to search across the entire database using keywords.
The search syntax is complex. If you enter several keywords the search interface will search first for all the terms, then for any of the terms, or you can specify one or the other of these options. You can search for phrases by placing your search terms within quotation marks. There are proximity connectors (/s, /p, /n) and wildcards, replacing one (?) or any number (*) of characters, and which can be used at the beginning or end of search terms. It is also possible to exclude search terms (-). It is possible to require that search terms occur in a specific order, and it is possible to combine all these search functions, e.g. to search for terms within so many words of one another and in a particular order.
If you have a fairly broad research topic, It is a good strategy to begin with a simple search and then to filter results. For example, to find recent Supreme Court cases on the Article 21(A) constitutional right to education, you might search for the terms (without quotation marks) "right to education." You could then filter the results to include only Supreme Court decisions. The results are displayed by default in order of relevance, but you can switch to date of decision to see newer (or older) cases first.
Once you have run your search, narrowing options will be on the left hand side of the screen. The light bulbs the appear in your search terms, allows you to see how exactly Manupatra is interpreting each search term.
The Legal Search template permits you to search by act and section number, or for cases by any combination of judge, appellant/respondent, subject, and case note. For example, to locate Supreme Court cases on the right to education you could search for the subject "education" and the case note "right to education." Retrieved cases are accompanied by an interactive timeline/authority check.
If you know the title of the statute you need, you can use the Act Search interface. First, you must select central or state acts, then click on the List All Acts link on the right side of the screen. After doing that you can select your act from a drop-down list, or after typing in the first several letters of the act.
If you don't know the name of the statute you need, you can choose to search through the Bare Acts from the left hand menu.This allows you to search alphabetically, chronologically, by subject, ministry, or industry affected. Note that you can also search for repealed and amending acts. Note also that the same search interface exists for regulations, pending bills, committee reports, etc.
Suppose you want to locate the Citizenship Act. You could search the alphabetical index of statutes and retrieve the following screen. Clicking on the title of the Act allows you to see the full text of the 1955 statute. The green plus symbol next to the Act's name will let you see any amending acts, and the symbols on the right provide assorted helpful links to things like rules promulgated under the statute, annotations of the statute, or even timelines for the statute. It will also provide a link to any related pending legislation.
