-The Times of India NEW DELHI: About one -third of all mercy petitions in Independent India have been commuted to life imprisonment with a new report stating that 3534 of 5106 petitions were rejected while 1572 were considered favourably. This is the first such estimate of mercy petitions filed since Independence and is based on several sources accessed by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) in its report Status of Mercy...

-The Hindu District Mineral Foundations were set up to protect the interests of Adivasi communities who have borne the costs of mining. But they are flawed in their current form Through 2011-13, dogged investigators from the Justice M. B. Shah Commission on illegal mining toured the rust-red villages, forests and rivers of northern Odisha, and trawled through reams of official records including from the environment, minerals, railways, and revenue departments. They met...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Narendra Modi government has strongly favoured retention of the capital punishment with the two government-appointed nominees submitting their dissent notes on the Law Commission's recommendation on phased abolition of death penalty. The panel, in its 242-page report submitted to the government and the Supreme Court on Monday, recommended abolition of death penalty for all crimes other than terrorism-related offences and waging war against the country. Releasing...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Shying away from a blanket ban on death penalty the Law Commission is likely to recommend "gradual" abolition in all cases, except terror-related ones, as practiced in countries like the United Kingdom. Following extensive consultations, the panel has proposed that heinous crimes be meted out harsher punishments ranging from 30-60 years as practiced in states like Maharashtra and Jharkhand. The panel headed by Justice A P Shah...

-Livemint.com The petitioners have pinned their hopes on a clause in the 2013 land law that the government is now planning to amend   Punjabhai Modhwadia, 42, isn’t giving up his land. Not without a fight. Sitting under a banyan tree overlooking fields of cotton, jowar and groundnut, next to what Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani called one of the biggest construction sites in the world, the Jamnagar farmer describes why...