-Down to Earth The ordinance does not expressly define ‘extraordinary circumstances’: Such legislative ambiguity makes one question the entire exercise of introducing this particular provision As the Union government announced massive reforms as part of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) relief package, attention went to three agriculture sector ordinances related to farmers’ trade, contract farming and amendments in the Essential Commodities Act. While each of the three ordinances have far-reaching implications from legal...

-Outlook India If Delhi Police has done its investigation without fear or favour, why does it want its own prosecutors? Successive governments in India, unlike in China, have been able to get away with a lot. From the Delhi riots of 1984 and the mass killings of 2002 in Gujarat to periodic communal violence and decades of state violence and repression in Jammu & Kashmir, India has escaped being put in the...

-The Hindu Compensation for last fiscal paid to States using previous years’ balance of cess The Centre made up a 42% shortfall in Goods and Services Tax compensation cess collection in 2019-20 by using balance of cess from previous years, plus a transfer from the Consolidated Fund of India. Meanwhile, the GST Council, which was slated to meet this month to discuss the possibility of market borrowing to meet likely future shortfalls,...

-The Indian Express Beginning May, a huge influx of returning migrants, unable to sustain themselves in locked-down cities, walking kilometres, starving in trains, reached the succour of home in Bihar. But with no work, and the lockdown affecting the rural economy as well with falling agricultural prices, they are leaving again. Patna: THEY STAND close to each other, bags slung over shoulders, noses pressed against the glass. They watch flights land and...

-Financial Express Over 152 crore person (work) days have been created under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) so far during the current fiscal, and this is more than half the ambitious revised target of 300 crore days set for the whole of the year, according to the official dashboard. In the April-July period of last fiscal, the person days created under the scheme were just 116 crore. Please click...