-The Times of India DELHI: Despite cases of intimidation of key witnesses being a routine, there is still no law in India on witness protection or to deal with threat to their life and otherwise from criminals and those in positions of power. Many witnesses died under mysterious circumstances in the Vyapam scam. In Asaram case, too several witnesses came under attack. Not long ago in the Jessica Lal murder case, several...

-Business Standard According to a proposal by the Union labour ministry, 10 per cent of the employees or 100 workers will be needed at least to form a trade union Barely a week after trade unions across the country celebrate the Labour Day, the National Democratic Alliance government will meet workers' and industry representatives on May 6 to discuss proposals to make forming unions tougher and union activities more rule-bound. The proposals to...

-The Hindu With its judgment to strike down a legal provision for violating freedom of speech, the Supreme Court has paved the way for thoughtful jurisprudence in the age of the Internet While describing Sec.124A of the IPC (sedition) as the "prince among the political sections designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen", Mahatma Gandhi offered us an ironic way of thinking about liberty-curbing laws through the metaphor of illegal tyrants....

-Economic and Political Weekly While the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act 2001 is a progressive piece of legislation that recognises farmers' rights to seed, it demands payment of an annual maintenance fee by the farmers to protect the varieties which they have been cultivating and conserving for years, only because these varieties have been brought under legal protection through national legislation. Parameswaran Prajeesh (prajeesh@mssrf.res.in) is a researcher with the...

-The Indian Express The political discourse over land acquisition has proceeded in binary terms - industry versus farmer, growth versus no growth - thereby obfuscating the real issue at the heart of the land acquisition debate: the fear of arbitrary exercise of state power in reshaping property relations in Indian society. Instead of tweaking the 2015 land acquisition bill with a few amendments here and there to appease political allies and...