-Frontline There is growing violence against women and children in Haryana, aided by the apparent collusion between the State government and the upper-caste-dominated khap panchayats. THE road leading to Dabra village in Haryana’s Hisar district is not very difficult to locate. It was at Dabra, a mere 15 kilometres from the district headquarters, that a heinous crime was committed on September 9. It would have gone unnoticed had it not been accompanied...

-The Tribune India is governed by a written Constitution and any policy decision, programme by the Central or state government must be within the constitutional parameter of the Constitution. The State under our Constitution is mandated to protect the human rights. Any government policy, which seeks to shift this responsibility from the state to the private sector, would be, without anything more, unconstitutional and hence impermissible. The United Nations, since its inception, has...

-The Times of India Unjustified judicial intervention could compromise the good the right to information is doing Perhaps the biggest contribution of our Parliament towards promoting greater accountability in independent India is the enactment of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. If, as they say, information is power, then the RTI Act has been a veritable 'Brahmastra' in the hands of the Indian public. It has been extremely successful in...

-Deccan Herald The Central Information Commission (CIC) has suggested that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal ministry to frame RTI rules, to refrain from splitting the queries made in one application and instead prepare response after compiling all details. Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra asked for revising the present system of sending different queries in one RTI application to different information officers. “Unless the RTI application contains unmanageably a large...

-Outlook Journalistic activities should be kept out of the purview of the proposed right to privacy law, a government appointed expert panel has suggested. The group headed by retired Justice A P Shah, in its report, suggested that publication of personal data for artistic and journalistic purposes need not be considered as infringement of privacy under the proposed legislation. Besides, the group suggested that government could exempt application of privacy law in case...