-The Hindu The object of the amended provisions is to speed up the process of dispensation of justice, liberalise and expedite access to relief for victims of atrocities. Four months after Parliament amended the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 to tighten provisions to ensure speedier justice to SCs and STs, the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry notified the Rules to give effect to the changes...

-Hindustan Times The social justice and empowerment ministry has decided to go ahead with a bill which seeks to provide recognition to transgenders and protect their rights despite other ministries “failing” to send their comments on it during the inter-ministerial consultation process. It has sent the draft bill on the ‘Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2016’ to the law ministry for finalisation before it is sent to the cabinet for approval. “The draft...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: As many as 882 deaths in five years, nearly four-fifths of them in a single state. These statistics do not pertain to some inexorable natural calamities. These are figures of tribal children who lost their lives in state-run residential schools across the country between 2010 and 2015. These are numbers of innocent lives lost seemingly on account of sheer official apathy, manifest in the lack of basic...

-The Hindu Forging gram sabha resolutions clears the path to lucrative mining... Such fictions manufacture on file the legal requirement of villagers’ participation and consent. Over 12,000 villages across Odisha conserve their community forests, says a 2013 Odisha Jungle Manch study. In a visit last October to seven villages in Keonjhar district’s Gandhamardan range, Munda communities showed me their forest protection rosters. Each roster listed four villagers for every weekday to roam...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The women and child development ministry (WCD) has written to the Rajya Sabha seeking to withdraw its response on marital rape describing it as an "oversight." The fresh response that the ministry is likely to put before Parliament is that the issue is under law commission's consideration. WCD minister Maneka Gandhi's response to a Parliament question in Rajya Sabha terming marital rape as a concept unsuited...