-The United Nations   Five United Nations agencies have banded together to call for urgently addressing gender-biased sex selection favouring boys, a common practice in many parts of South, East and Central Asia that they say fuels a culture of discrimination and violence. “Sex selection in favour of boys is a symptom of pervasive social, cultural, political and economic injustices against women, and a manifest violation of women’s human rights,” says a...

-The Hindu   This Bill is for meting out justice to people who have been wronged: Mamata The West Bengal Assembly on Tuesday passed by voice vote the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill, 2011, even as the Opposition led by Sura Kanta Mishra of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), staged a walkout saying that they could not accept a Bill which would grant only leaseholds and not ownerships, create a...

The Centre is exploring the option of helping out Bengal by stepping up assistance for specific schemes, a route that allows room for manoeuvre within rules. The Centre’s line of thought emerged on a day Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra was in Delhi to discuss ways to bail out the cash-starved state government. Mitra, who had an hour- long meeting with his Union counterpart Pranab Mukherjee, remained tight-lipped on what they discussed....

-Deccan Herald   The Central Information Commission (CIC) has pulled up the Prime Minister’s Office for ''casually handling'' a plea filed under the RTI Act that demanded details of the foreign visits undertaken by Sonia Gandhi as chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC). Chief Information Commissioner Satyanand Mishra expressed displeasure as the Prime Minister’s Office forwarded the RTI plea seeking information on the Congress president’s visits to foreign countries, first to the Ministry...

-The Indian Express   Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was simply stating the obvious on Sunday when he said, “Parliament is supreme.” Neither did he depart from a common understanding of the scheme of things under our Constitution when he clarified that it is Parliament’s right to decide on legislation and nobody else can presume to lay down deadlines for bills to be passed. Yet, such had been the abdication of argument...