-The Hindustan Times Patna: Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has called for "serious government response" and "monitoring at the highest level" in the cases of violent attacks on whistleblowers in Bihar. He said his ministry was working on a ‘protocol' for whistleblowers, and that would soon be applicable to the entire country. In a letter to chief minister Nitish Kumar, Ramesh said whistleblowers and their families were facing constant torture and...

-The Hindu I am sure all efforts are being made, but no arrests have yet been made, said Jairam Patna: Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has written to Bihar Chief Minister raising concerns over the recent murders of RTI Activists in Bihar. Mr. Ramesh said in the letter that his ministry was working on a protocol - that would be applicable for the entire country - for such cases. In two recent incidents,...

-The Indian Express Almost a month after the Supreme Court dismissed convicted Khalistani terrorist Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar's plea that his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, German President Joachim Gauck and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle have written to their Indian counterparts seeking clemency for Bhullar. Bhullar, who was convicted for the 1993 car bomb blast outside the Youth Congress office in the capital in which nine people were killed, was...

-The Statesman GUWAHATI, 7 MAY: Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), a New Delhi-based rights body, has come out strongly against the Delhi University (DU) for its decision to introduce compulsory Hindi and other Modern Indian Languages (MIL) in its courses without assessing the ground reality and urged the University Grants Commission to intervene with the famed university "to halt the four year undergraduate programme and not to introduce compulsory MILs...

-The Indian Express A sound whistleblowers' protection law is long awaited. It languishes in Parliament at the system's peril Nandi Singh, a resident of a remote village in Assam, was brutally attacked with axes in September 2012 as a result of a complaint filed by him regarding irregularities in the functioning of fair price shops supplying rations under the public distribution system. He succumbed to his injuries on the way to the...