-The Hindu The representatives of the recognised national and State-level political parties on Friday expressed satisfaction over the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), developed by the Election Commission (EC) and made some suggestions for further improvement. The Commission said "the suggestions will be considered by the Expert Committee and the EC." Informed sources said the improved VVPAT could possibly be used for field...

-The Hindu   Top civil society bodies are challenging the government's ‘counter-affidavit' in the Paid News case which seeks to gut the Election Commission's powers In a major twist to the Ashok Chavan vs. Madhav Kinhalkar legal battle (more notorious as the "Paid News" scandal), leading civil society organisations and eminent individuals have approached the Supreme Court to implead themselves into the case. Their intervention application, moved by advocate Prashant Bhushan, minces no words...

-The Hindu   A concern about the Food Security Bill is that legal entitlement has been weakened to mean a passive right to receive whatever the state gives The hallmark of the National Food Security Bill 2011 is that if implemented it will translate into India's first ever right to food legislation, guaranteeing food as a justiciable, legal entitlement to its people. However, in its current form, the Bill fails to evolve a...

-The Hindu The Election Commission has disqualified 2,045 candidates who contested by-elections/general elections to the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies of various States and Union Territories for failing to submit their poll expenditure accounts within the stipulated 30 days from the date of announcement of results. These persons, most of them non-serious contestants, will be barred from standing in any election conducted by the EC for three years from the date...

-Live Mint Despite being declared unconstitutional by SC, ‘khaps' continue to hold sway in parallel with the state machinery Rohtak/Bhiwani: Ravinder Gehlawat and his wife Shilpa had been married for less than four months when they were marched out of their village-Dharana in Jhajjar district of Haryana-by men of the local community and warned never to return. Their fate was sealed on 24 April 2009 when the local khap panchayat, which translates...