Former law minister and anti-Emergency crusader Shanti Bhushan on Tuesday pleaded with a Supreme Court's five-judge constitution bench not to go ahead with the framing of Reporting guidelines and said fetters on press freedom would impede democracy.  Bhushan cited the infamous ADM Jabalpur case judgement rendered by a constitution bench of the Supreme Court, which had by 4:1 majority upheld suspension of right to life during the Emergency, and said it...

Don't embark on a futile exercise, Shanti Bhushan tells Supreme Court Constitution Bench   The Press Council of India (PCI) on Tuesday suggested that the Supreme Court frame guidelines for the media as these would be in the interest of not only administration of justice and rights of the litigant public but also the media themselves. “The media, both print and electronic, have been playing an important role in shaping and sustaining Indian...

-The Telegraph Former law minister Shanti Bhushan today urged the Supreme Court to dissolve a five-judge Constitution bench set up to lay down dos and don’ts for media Reporting on sub judice cases, saying it was “detrimental to the rights of the press and would destroy democracy”. Bhushan cited an earlier example in which a former Chief Justice of India (CJI) had dissolved a bench after he found no support. He was referring...

Officials may pocket the wage increases, but the wage level in MGNREGA seems just enough to induce workers to turn up. This year marks the sixth anniversary of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), India's landmark right-to-work programme. The Act guarantees 100 days of paid employment to every rural household in India (up to 850 million people), regardless of eligibility criteria, and establishes the government's...

Inaccuracy in Reporting court proceedings has caused friction between the press and the legal community On the morning of 10 August 2011, senior lawyer Harish Salve looked upset as he entered Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.H. Kapadia’s courtroom, holding a newspaper that had published an article on a case he was arguing in the Supreme Court. Salve complained that the article in question, written by a journalist at news agency Press...