-The Hindu A new survey ahead of elections shows lack of jobs is single biggest worry Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, a public opinion survey in 12 states has found that political parties are the most distrusted political institutions in India. It also found that one in five of those surveyed felt that unemployment is the single biggest issue facing the country today. The survey, Politics and Society between Elections 2019, found...

-The Hindu SC to hear petitioner next week In a time of deep political polarisation, refusing to comply with the RTI Act seems to be one of the few issues that has united national parties across the ideological spectrum. Despite a June 2013 ruling from the Central Information Commission (CIC) that they fall within the ambit of the transparency law, parties insist that they cannot be considered public authorities under the Act. Six years...

-Hindustan Times From a constitutional point of view, the scheme fails the tests of rationality and non-arbitrariness Earlier this month, the Supreme Court indicated that it would hear the long-pending constitutional challenge to the electoral bonds scheme. The electoral bonds scheme, which was introduced by the government in early 2018, provides new channels for private funding of political parties, and has been subjected to severe criticism, including by a former Chief Election...

-The Hindu Sabotaging the Forest Rights Act damages democracy Since 1980, through the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) has “diverted for non-forest use” (bureaucratese for destroyed) over 1.5 million hectares of forest. How many Adivasis and forest-dwellers have been evicted by this ‘lawful’ forest destruction? Stripping these forests has yielded thousands of crores of rupees for corporations to which a bulk of these forestlands...

-The Indian Express The Investigating Officer, Inspector Sunil Kumar, filed the chargesheet in court on April 17, 2015 and since then, police have met senior officials of the Ministry, sent multiple letters with reminders, but they have not received any “concrete response”. New Delhi: In the Supreme Court last week, Attorney General K K Venugopal, making submissions against a plea seeking review of its December 14, 2018 order that dismissed PILs...