-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Can mice or fire destroying files be an adequate excuse not to give information under the RTI Act? That's a question that the central information commission has asked officials in response to a complaint filed by an RTI applicant who claimed that he had been denied information by the department concerned on the basis that the files were "missing". The RTI applicant, Virendra Singh Jafna, had...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Modi government's efforts to cap the price of cardiac stents exposed the nexus between stent companies and hospitals in looting the public by overcharging them. But no action has been taken against either companies or hospitals. None of them paid penalties or faced charges for colluding to cheat the public. Contrast this with the US government which has, over the years, fined the three biggest...

-Firstpost.com After Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh has now been rocked by farmer unrest. At least six farmers were killed and eight others were critically injured on Tuesday when the police resorted to firing to subdue the protesting farmers in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh. In both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, the farmers’ demands are almost similar: they want complete farm loan waiver as a short-term palliative and secondly, institutionalised mechanism for getting better prices...

-The Hindu Court defers petition to June 27 for omnibus hearing The Supreme Court on Friday refrained to order an interim stay on a series of government notifications requiring citizens to have Aadhaar by June 30, 2017, to equally access benefits and entitlements, even as the Centre denied imposing any such ‘deadline” to force people to get Aadhaar. The government was responding to a petition challenging 17 notifications issued by various government departments...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...