An FIR may be slapped on Team Anna for flouting some "essential" conditions of the undertaking during the last few days of the massive protest at Ramlila Maidan, sources in Delhi Police said on Friday. During several meetings this week, police officers contemplated action against the organizers for breaking four important conditions of the undertaking signed by them. According to sources, the team flouted the undertaking by using loudspeakers beyond 10pm,...

The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered private hospitals functioning on public land to make good their promise to treat the poor for free. This decision is intended to change the belief that “health care is given only to those who can afford it”. The bench of Justices R V Raveendran and A K Patnaik passed a short order after a detailed hearing in which Lawyers representing several private hospitals tried to...

The Anna Hazare agitation is showing signs of becoming a political and social monster. There are several disturbing elements already in evidence, perhaps more disturbing than the awfulness of corruption. Whatever one thinks of the anti-corruption bill drafted by the government, the agitation, by the day, is growing scarier. There is a combustible mix here of hero worship, cult propagation, populist absolutism and irrational exuberance, mass hysteria, de-politicization, militarization, and,...

-The Indian Express   A day after Rajya Sabha members cutting across party lines attacked the higher judiciary’s collegium system of appointment, an indignant Supreme Court found its voice in the farewell speech of a retiring Justice. Justice VS Sirpurkar, whom Chief Justice of India SH Kapadia referred to as a “jolly good fellow” in his address, said the sight on TV was “not at all digestible”. “The country is at crossroads. It was...

The ever-energetic Jairam Ramesh has unveiled a new land acquisition policy for discussion. He has taken on the difficult task of changing an old law whose implementation has led to a sorry mess in Nandigram, Singur and Noida, to mention only a few of the recent cases that have hit the headlines. India’s policy regime for managing land rights and land transactions is totally dysfunctional. Greedy politicians in state governments have...