-The Hindu The Supreme Court’s suggestion to ‘match the following’ on political donations is impractical and incorrect In 2014, the Delhi High Court held that both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were guilty of illegally accepting donations from two companies registered in India but whose controlling shareholder was Vedanta, a foreign company. The court held that this was in contravention of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 1976, as...

-Newsclick.in Finance ministers from G7 countries have agreed on a deal to check tax avoidance by the biggest multinational conglomerations. How the G20 reacts to this accord and how these plans are implemented, remains to be seen. A recent report by ProPublica has revealed how multibillionaires from the US, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, among others, have managed to avoid paying federal taxes...

-The Hindu The islanders have to be consulted before any change is imposed, they say A group of retired bureaucrats wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday to express concern over what it termed were “disturbing developments” in the Union Territory of Lakshadweep “in the name of development”. Ninety-three former All India and Central services officers of the Constitutional Conduct Group wrote to Mr. Modi on the occasion of...

-IndianSpend.com Recent changes to environment clearance rules allow polluting industries to expand their operations and change their product mix without full central scrutiny. This may weaken the already poor compliance with environmental Regulations and could even lead to industrial accidents like the 2020 Visakhapatnam gas leak, experts say. New Delhi: Recent changes in the environment clearance process for India's most polluting industries will allow them to expand their capacity and change their...

-The Hindu There are recognised ways to overcome the patents hurdle, ensuring social justice and boosting the COVID-19 battle In order to achieve global herd immunity and prevent new strains of COVID-19 from emerging, possibly for years to come, vaccines need to be affordable and available in massive quantities throughout the globe. This can happen through patent owners voluntarily licensing their products to other companies, especially Indian producers who are experienced at...