Civil society groups on Tuesday came out strongly against the Centre’s draft National Food Security Bill, which has not incorporated the National Advisory Council’s suggestion for providing maternity entitlements to about 15 crore women in the informal (non-Government) sector, as in the Central Government, thereby denying food security (breast feeding) to infants.  Similarly, the current legal guarantee of 'hot cooked meals' for children attending anganwadis has been diluted by providing the...

-DNA    Drilling into government’s draft of grievance redress bill, National Advisory Council (NAC) member Aruna Roy and her colleagues from National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) on Wednesday demanded some critical changes in the proposed law to make it more useful to a common man. They also vowed to start a “public movement” in case government refused to pay heed to them. Congress led-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government is already...

Information obtained under Right To Information Act is increasingly becoming the basis of public interest petitions seeking judicial redress of grievances. The Supreme Court on Monday disapproved of this modus operandi and said from now, it would not entertain PILs solely based on RTI information. "Petitioners banking on information obtained through RTI Act must approach the concerned ministry, bring the facts to its notice and demand justice. If the ministry does...

-The Telegraph   The government has listed the Lokpal bill for discussion and passage during the winter session of Parliament but has failed to line up the land acquisition bill though an unscheduled introduction is not ruled out. Both bills had gone to House standing committees around the same time after the monsoon session of Parliament, and both hold electoral significance for the Congress. Failure to get the Lokpal bill passed in the November...

A child is God's gift and none must try to know its sex in advance, said the Bombay high court on Thursday while upholding a civic circular which disallows portable ultrasonography machines to be taken to patients homes. The court's observation assumes significance in the light of recent media reports on female foeticide. A division bench of Justices PB Majmudar and Mridula Bhatkar were hearing a petition filed by the Radiology...