-Outlook The Supreme Court today said it would examine the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy after it is notified with the Centre promising to do it within two weeks. A bench headed by Justice G S Singhvi granted two weeks time to the Centre to issue notification and posted the matter for hearing on December 12. Additional Solicitor General Siddharth Luthra informed the court that the Cabinet had approved the policy that will bring...

-One World South Asia Reducing incomes, stagnating yields, increasing costs of cultivation, fragmenting of land-holdings and reducing of institutions credit facilities plot the graph of farmers' suicides in India. A national consultation and public hearing on framers' suicides being organised by Action Aid in the capital brought together experts and policy critics to evaluate the progress of government initiatives to respond to the ongoing agrarian crisis. Suicides are only one extreme symptom of...

-The Indian Express Earlier this month, the police in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district claimed to have found in a remote forest village two 10-year-old girls who “narrated tales of their sexual exploitation by Maoists”. Following their account, the police arrested suspected Maoist Kudiyami Gujja and a few other rebels. Gujja was paraded before the media where he admitted that he regularly “took away 10-12-year-old girls and raped them”. The parents of the girls...

-The Hindu By not informing Ajmal Kasab of his right to seek a judicial review of the rejection of his mercy petition, the UPA government has committed a serious wrong The hurried and secretive hanging of Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab is both an administrative wrong and a constitutional impropriety. The Manmohan Singh government and the UPA chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, owe it to the nation and the whole world to explain why their...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Thursday said it had directed appointment of retired judges as heads of information commissions at the Centre and state level to ensure their independence as many were headed by persons who "have been in the good books of government". "You will find the chief information commissioners, both at the Centre and state level, are persons who have been in the good books of the...