-The Hindu     While denying voting rights to undertrials contradicts the principle that a person is innocent until proved guilty, disenfranchising convicts will aggravate their alienation from society The Supreme Court's decision last month in Chief Election Commissioner v. Jan Chaukidar has attracted significant attention for its perceived potential to address the criminalisation of politics. Justices A.K Patnaik and S.J. Mukhopadhaya ruled that since one of the conditions to be a candidate under...

-PTI Kolkata: The Trinamul Congress swept the three-tier panchayat polls in West Bengal capturing 13 out of 17 Zilla Parishads, while the Congress put up a poor show with just one in Murshidabad. TMC's clean sweep in the zilla parishads in 11 of 12 south Bengal districts and two out of five north Bengal districts, demonstrated that the two-and-a-half-years of incumbency and controversies, including the Saradha chit fund scam, by and large,...

-The Hindu Making the Gross Domestic Product the sole measure of national development for many years has left Indians with a natural environment that is among the most polluted in the world. Regardless of that dismal outcome, and in spite of settled law that polluters should pay, the Centre and State governments continue to balk at stronger enforcement of environmental laws. New evidence from a study by the Tata Institute of...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Reaching out to youths in Naxal-hit areas, Centre on Friday launched a placement linked skill development scheme targeting 50,000 rural men and women, mostly tribals, in 24 worst affected districts. Initiating the programme called "Roshni", rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said at least 50 per cent of the candidates covered under the scheme will be women and special efforts will be made to proactively cover particularly vulnerable tribal groups...

-Live Mint   Data from the 2008 Karnataka polls and the 2009 Lok Sabha elections reveal a small positive correlation Ever since the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) published its report on assets of candidates for the forthcoming assembly elections in Karnataka, there has been significant outrage in the mainstream media about the significant increase in declared assets of candidates who had also contested in 2008. Given this background, we thought it might...