-PTI Demands include compensation for drought, increase in MSP Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday assured tribal farmers that their forest land rights claims will be settled by December this year. Fadnavis gave assurance to representatives of the protesting farmers who marched to Azad Maidan here for redressal of their grievances, which include compensation for drought and transfer of forest rights to tribals. A delegation of the protesting tribals met Fadnavis at...

-TheWeek.in Noted ecologist Madhav Gadgil blames the “law-flouting” state government for the devastation in Kerala. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), headed by Gadgil in 2011, had suggested measures to preserve the ecologically frail Ghats. But, the Kerala government, like the other five states, chose to reject the report. Having suffered such devastation, Gadgil feels that the state should survey the “ecologically sensitive zones” that have been compromised due to...

-The Indian Express Drop in Muslim representation in Legislatures is related to the rise of the BJP. Muslim MPs currently occupy 19 seats of the Lok Sabha (or 3.5 per cent of its members), the lowest figure since 1952. Between 1980 and 2014, the representation of Muslim MPs in the lower house of India’s Parliament has diminished by nearly two-third even as the share of Muslims in the population rose during the...

-TheWire.in The Centre's decision to defer the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill 2018 – after protests from the public and the opposition – is temporary good news. Sub-section (5) of Section 13 of the Right to Information Act provided that the salaries and allowance and other terms and conditions of service of the chief information commissioner and information commissioners shall be same as that of the chief election commissioner and election commissioners,...

-The Telegraph Chandigarh: Bureaucrats in Haryana now have to stand up - "meticulously correct and courteous" - every time an MP or an MLA visits their office, according to a circular. The circular had been issued in the last week of May but came to light following the standoff between the Delhi government led by Arvind Kejriwal and IAS officers in Delhi. Several senior Haryana-cadre bureaucrats in Chandigarh claimed they had heard about...