PROFESSOR Shamnad Basheer joined the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata, in November 2008 as the first Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor in Intellectual Property Law. Before this, he was Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University law school and a research associate at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC).  He is the founder of several initiatives, including...

Ramaswamy R. Iyer, former Secretary, Union Ministry of Water Resources, has been a consistent critic of the idea of interlinking rivers (ILR). In this interview, he shares his concerns about the Supreme Court's judgment directing the government to implement the project, and explains why it is deeply flawed. Excerpts In your article in “The Hindu”, you have claimed that the government's stand on the project is ambiguous. The amicus curiae has,...

-The Economic Times The Opposition, acting in sync with the Trinamool Congress, a component of the ruling UPA at the Centre, on Wednesday scored a victory in the Rajya Sabha when it got the government to commit itself to the passage of the Lokpal and Lokayukta Bill in the House in the "first half of the budget session itself.'' "We want to bring the bill within this part of the session,'' parliamentary...

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday announced to hand over the probe into the killing of IPS officer Narendra Singh to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Narendra Kumar was brutally crushed to death by a tractor allegedly by the 'mining mafia' in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh on March 8. The opposition Congress had stalled the proceedings of the House and forced an adjournment demanding a CBI probe into...

In the absence of legislation to protect women from sexual harassment at the workplace, the Supreme Court in 1997 laid down guidelines in the Vishaka vs State of Rajasthan in 1997. Thirteen years later, Parliament came up with the “Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010”. However, the Bill sees sexual harassment at the workplace not as a criminal offence but as a mere civil wrong, the...