-The Hindu Once slotted as vermin, these animals are "open season" and could become easy game for hunters as well as traders in meat. Since 2015, the Union Environment Ministry has acceded to requests from Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Bihar to declare wild boar, rhesus macaque, and nilgai as vermin within specified territories of these States, and outside forests and protected areas. This reprieve means that those who kill these animals here...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The video of a 60-year-old woman beating up her 85-year-old mother, which went viral on social media, corroborates the findings of a survey carried out by Helpage India that one in five elders experiences some kind of abuse at home. The study also found that 98% of the abuse victims do not file a complaint despite the existence of a specific law to protect them. On...

-Business Standard If the courts admit the complaint filled by Kerala police against Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, the bottling arm of Coca-Cola India, and its senior executives, this will be the first instance when the stringent provisions of the Scheduled Caste and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act 2015, will be put to test. Legal experts point out that this could also open up "a can of worms" for several disputed...

-Scroll.in Land leasing Laws are negatively impacting the people they are supposed to benefit, pulling agricultural productivity down, and increasing land degradation. Nearly one-third of India is reeling under drought, evident from reports and images of distressed farmers and parched land captured in the media. The increasing unpredictability of rainfall and prolonged hot patches has severely impacted rural farmland and, consequently, the people dependent on agriculture. Drought and resultant crop loss, in...

-The Hindu ‘It didn’t go well with India’s IPR policy’ New Delhi: The former Deputy Chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia criticised an Agriculture Ministry order earlier this year to cap the royalty and sale price of cotton seed. The Ministry, in March, used its powers under the Essential Commodities Act — a legislation that allows the government to determine the price of commodities including seed — to declare that...