Indications are that many civilians were killed in the counterinsurgency operation In the early hours of Friday, about six hundred troopers from the Central Reserve Police Force and the Combat Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) commando unit conducted an operation in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district in which 18 tribal villagers were killed and six CRPF troopers injured. Two suspected Maoists were killed in Sukma in an unrelated incident the same day. As per the...

Even seven years after the people-friendly Right-To-Information (RTI) Act was passed by Parliament around this time in 2005, people who use this legislation to expose corruption continue to live with fear of being threatened, thrashed and throttled to death in Gujarat. That the road to accessing information from government is still arduous in the Bharatiya Janata party-ruled state became evident once again earlier this week when an RTI activist of Amreli...

-The Times of India One of India's most unusual experiments with citizen participation in governance is set to come to an end on Friday, when central information commissioner (CIC)Shailesh Gandhi retires. Gandhi, a noted Right To Information (RTI) activist from Mumbai, was appointed to the central information commission in 2008. Under the RTI Act, there is a state information commission in every state for its laws, and a central information commission for...

-PTI Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday said the wrong policy and non-functional police of the Left Front Government in West Bengal were responsible for the rise of Maoists in the State. “Left Front Government should be blamed for the rise of Maoists in West Bengal. Their wrong policy and non-functional police have allowed the Maoists to enter the state and strengthen their base in Junglemahal,” the senior Congress leader told...

-The Hindu A schoolgirl, accused of being talkative in the class, was forced to stand for over five hours outside the classroom after her lips were sealed with an adhesive tape, in a private school in the Noorkhan Bazar locality of Old City here on Wednesday. Syeda Sadar Fatima, studying in Class 9 at Sam British School, rushed home weeping and reported the matter to her parents. Her father Syed Mujtaba Hussain...