-PTI   Over 200 government officials have been penalised for their alleged involvement in corruption by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) during September this year.  Out of the total of 201 government employees, the highest number of 46 were from Central Board of Excise and Customs, 29 from Syndicate Bank, 20 from State Bank of India and 13 each from Delhi Development Authority and Ministry of Railways among others, a CVC report said.  Besides...

-The Times of India Given the impunity generally enjoyed by perpetrators of communal violence, the imposition of life sentence on 31 rioters for burning alive 33 Muslim victims in Sardarpura in the 2002 Gujaratriots is a milestone in India's history. If the signal goes out that those responsible for heinous communal massacres do not enjoy immunity from prosecution, that in itself will have a salutary effect in curbing their incidence. It's...

A persons's caste claim cannot be dismissed merely because his personal traits do not match the peculiar anthropological and ethnological characteristics of a Scheduled Tribe that he claims to be part of, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday. Introducing a liberal interpretation for testing the genuineness of caste claims and benefits, a bench of Justices D K Jain and A K Ganguly said if a claimant has the right documents to...

-The Hindu   An event called ‘Navjyoti' was organised by UNICEF in collaboration with DD Sahyadri to honour these girls from Maharashtra For the many poor girls who drop out of school in Maharashtra's rural hinterland, there are those who decide to stay. And then there are those who stage a comeback. It's what Lata Batku did, after being forced to drop out of school to take care of her baby sister. Her village...

An RTI activist, who stumbled over words used in his own affidavit, was refused permission to cross-examine witnesses in the Adarsh scam case. Hearing an application filed by Adarsh society members objecting to Santosh Daundkar's plea to grill witnesses, the judicial commission of Justice (retired) J A Patil and member P Subhramanyam however dismissed the plea to throw out the affidavit and evidence submitted by the activist. The Adarsh panel had...