-Business Standard A committee set up to review laws related to protection of environment and forests, headed by former Cabinet secretary T S R Subramanian, has recommended an omnibus green law that will not only subsume existing legislation, but also hold the potential to undo existing judicial pronouncements on environmental issues. The proposed law will also do away with all existing authorities created under the Environment Protection Act, 1986. The panel's report,...

-Business Standard The committee has suggested an umbrella law to help set up new national and state-level regulators that would also take the powers of the existing pollution control boards The T S R Subramanian committee, constituted about three months ago to review laws related to environment and forest protection, has recommended some big-ticket changes to the rules and legislation. These include a complete overhaul of certain laws, special fast-track dispensation...

-Tehelka The new and improved Bill to prevent atrocities against Dalits runs the risk of being put in the cold storage A crime against Dalits happens every 18 minutes - three women raped every day, 13 murdered every week, 27 atrocities every day, six kidnapped every week and so on. This is the data compiled by the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, an NGO, which paints a grim picture of Indian...

-Economic and Political Weekly The failure by the police to file a First Information Report is the subject of much debate but the Final Report by which a case is closed has received scant attention. This article reflects on the findings following a study of 100 Final Reports each under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code and the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The police's differential stance...

-The Hindu Business Line   Anonymity can protect unpopular individuals from retaliation - and their ideas from suppression - at the hand of an intolerant society The Supreme Court of India has, thankfully, decided to reconsider an earlier order calling for revealing the identity of the whistle-blower while hearing a petition alleging gross misconduct against the Director of the country's foremost police agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). On September 15, a...