The Leaflet

About The Leaflet

The Leaflet is a New Delhi-based digital news platform devoted to law, the judiciary and constitutional rights — one of India's first publications built entirely around legal journalism for a general audience. Started in 2018 and operated by Nineteenonea Media Pvt Ltd, The Leaflet publishes court reporting, legal analysis, opinion and interviews on the Supreme Court, the high courts, judicial accountability, civil liberties and the Constitution. Its co-founder is Indira Jaising, the pioneering human rights lawyer and senior advocate of the Supreme Court, whose stature gives the platform unusual access to the legal world it covers. The Leaflet's journalism treats the law not as a specialist beat but as the terrain on which Indian democracy is contested — covering everything from bail jurisprudence and sedition law to judicial appointments, gender justice and free speech. In 2021 it became the lead petitioner in a landmark Bombay High Court challenge to the central government's IT Rules for digital media, cementing its role as both a chronicler and a participant in the legal battles over press freedom.

History

The Leaflet was started in 2018 as a digital news web portal publishing articles, opinion pieces and reportage on social and political issues, with a focus on news and current-affairs content related to law and justice. According to court records from its later litigation, it was conceived as a platform for 'eminent personalities, renowned journalists, academics, social workers and common citizens to express their views' — a publication where legal expertise and public debate would meet. It is owned and operated by Nineteenonea Media Pvt Ltd, a company created to run the portal.

The timing placed The Leaflet at the forefront of a new genre in Indian media. While legal reporting had long existed as a specialism within newspapers — and dedicated portals such as Live Law and Bar & Bench served lawyers — The Leaflet set out to make the law intelligible and urgent for citizens: to explain what a Supreme Court judgment means for ordinary life, why the appointment of judges matters, and how constitutional rights are won and lost in courtrooms. Its growth paralleled a period in which the judiciary itself became central to Indian public life, as courts weighed in on everything from privacy and LGBTQ rights to sedition, citizenship and electoral democracy.

Co-founder Indira Jaising

Indira Jaising, The Leaflet's co-founder, is among the most consequential lawyers in independent India. She was the first woman to be designated a senior advocate by the Bombay High Court, the first Indian woman elected to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and India's first woman Additional Solicitor General. As founder-secretary of the Lawyers Collective, she built one of the country's pioneering public-interest legal institutions, providing legal aid to the underprivileged and litigating landmark cases.

Jaising's career as a human-rights lawyer spans the Bhopal gas tragedy litigation, the fight against child labour, the economic rights of women, cases on domestic violence and Muslim personal law, and the defence of pavement dwellers and the homeless. In 1986 she founded the monthly magazine The Lawyers, devoted to social justice and women's issues in Indian law — an early experiment in legal journalism that The Leaflet extends into the digital age. Her political trajectory has also been contentious: the Home Ministry cancelled the foreign-funding licence of the Lawyers Collective, a decision she challenged, and her left-leaning, feminist public positions have made her a polarising figure. At The Leaflet she writes regularly — long essays on judicial accountability, gender justice and constitutional history — and anchors its interview programming.

Editorial Mission

The Leaflet's editorial mission is to democratise the law. Its founding premise is that legal developments — judgments, legislation, appointments, institutional practices — shape citizens' lives as directly as elections do, yet are covered in language that excludes non-lawyers. The platform therefore translates the courts for the public: explaining doctrine in plain language, tracing the human stakes of abstract legal questions, and holding the judiciary itself to account as an institution of power.

This mission gives The Leaflet a distinctive critical edge. Where conventional court reporting often defers to the bench, The Leaflet subjects judicial conduct to the same scrutiny it applies to the executive and legislature — questioning opaque collegium appointments, delayed judgments, and the higher judiciary's record on civil liberties. Its editorial stance is forthrightly progressive and rights-oriented: sympathetic to dissent, sceptical of state power, and insistent that the Constitution's promises be measured against institutional practice.

Coverage Areas

The Supreme Court is The Leaflet's central beat: Constitution Bench hearings, significant judgments, judicial appointments and transfers, and the court's administrative functioning. Its coverage combines daily reporting with analytical essays that place judgments in doctrinal and political context — explaining, for instance, what a bail ruling reveals about the state of personal liberty, or what a collegium resolution discloses about judicial independence.

The high courts receive sustained attention, with the platform tracking important rulings and institutional controversies across states. Standing thematic sections include Judicial Accountability — covering everything from the Justice Varma cash-recovery probe to debates over the collegium versus a judicial appointments commission; Sedition & UAPA, tracking the use of stringent laws against dissenters, journalists and activists; Women and Children, on gender justice and child rights; Life and Liberty, on Article 21 jurisprudence; and Civil Justice. The platform also covers Parliament's legislative business where it touches constitutional rights, and it publishes art, literature and 'special issues' that broaden its cultural range.

Landmark Legal Intervention: The IT Rules Challenge

In 2021, The Leaflet moved from covering the law to making it. Its operating company, Nineteenonea Media Pvt Ltd, filed a writ petition in the Bombay High Court challenging the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 — the central government's framework for regulating digital news media — arguing that the rules were ultra vires the IT Act, 2000 and violated Articles 14, 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. Journalist Nikhil Wagle filed a parallel public-interest litigation, and the cases were heard together.

The challenge was among the earliest and most significant legal attacks on the IT Rules, which digital news publishers argued imposed government oversight on editorial content through a three-tier grievance mechanism culminating in an inter-departmental government committee. By putting its own corporate existence behind the petition, The Leaflet demonstrated the seriousness of its press-freedom commitments — litigating the very regulatory framework under which it operated. The case became a reference point in the national debate over digital media regulation, alongside similar challenges filed by other publishers and journalist bodies across high courts.

Interviews and Conversations

A signature format of The Leaflet is long-form conversation. In its 'Conversations with The Leaflet' series, Indira Jaising interviews lawyers, judges, activists and scholars on the legal questions of the moment — from female genital mutilation and the state's denial of its practice in India, to the evolution of women's rights law. These interviews, published as video and text, bring legal expertise into public discourse in an accessible register.

The platform has also collaborated with peer publications: a notable joint interview with Article 14 featured Jaising in conversation with journalist Namita Bhandare on the women's movement and the future of gender-justice law, conducted on the occasion of the 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence. Its videos-and-podcasts section hosts explainers, panel discussions and documentary-style features, distributed through YouTube and the platform's own apps.

Digital Presence and Apps

The Leaflet operates as a digital-first publication at theleaflet.in, with mobile applications on Android and iOS that carry its articles, videos and podcasts. Recognising that much of India's news consumption now happens inside messaging apps, it has built direct distribution channels on WhatsApp and Telegram, inviting readers to 'join thousands of readers' on these platforms for updates — a strategy that takes legal journalism to audiences that might never visit a law-focused website.

Its social-media presence spans X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, where it promotes stories and engages in legal debate. The site's organisation into clear thematic sections — Supreme Court, High Courts, Judicial Accountability, Sedition & UAPA, Women and Children, Life and Liberty, Videos and Podcasts — makes its archive navigable as a reference on Indian public law, and its author pages, including Jaising's extensive archive, function as a running commentary on the judiciary by one of its most formidable critics.

Business Model

The Leaflet is operated by Nineteenonea Media Pvt Ltd as a digital publishing venture, sustained through the standard repertoire of independent digital media: advertising, sponsored content, events and reader support. Its niche — legally literate, civically engaged readers including lawyers, students, academics and activists — is a premium audience for institutional advertisers, legal-education providers and publishers, even if it is smaller than a general news portal's.

Like other independent Indian digital outlets, The Leaflet faces the structural economics of online publishing: low advertising yields, platform dependence and the difficulty of converting influence into revenue. Its response has been to deepen rather than broaden — investing in the authority of its coverage and the stature of its contributors, and in direct reader relationships through apps and messaging channels, rather than chasing mass traffic.

Position in Indian Legal Media

The Leaflet occupies a unique position between the legal profession's trade press and the general media. Live Law and Bar & Bench serve lawyers with comprehensive court coverage; mainstream newspapers cover landmark judgments as news events. The Leaflet does something different: it practices legal journalism as democratic criticism — reporting the courts while arguing about them, explaining doctrine while contesting power. Its willingness to publish sharp critiques of judicial functioning, including by its own co-founder, distinguishes it from more deferential court reporting.

In less than a decade, the platform has become an essential voice in India's constitutional conversation: cited by lawyers, read by judges, argued with by scholars, and watched by the state — as its IT Rules petition showed. It stands as proof of its founding wager: that in a democracy where the courtroom is a political arena, the law deserves not just a beat but a newspaper.