-The Economic Times Three weeks ago, when the Supreme Court reopened the iron-ore mining door some more in Karnataka, miners in Orissa breathed a Rs 50,000 crore sigh of relief. Also in the dock for some offences of a similar nature, Orissa's iron-ore miners, who produce a third of this mineral that is critical to steel, had been dreading their fate, which lay in the hands of a Central government panel. The...

-The Telegraph Calcutta: The Bengal government will seek Calcutta High Court's permission to appoint administrators to run the three-tier panchayat system if rural polls can't be held before the term of the elected bodies ends. The term of most gram panchayats - the lowest tier - ends on June 25. If new bodies are to be formed before that, polls have to be notified by May 17, a possibility officials at Writers'...

-The Hindu   In making a case for the investigative agency's autonomy, the Supreme Court is only stepping in where the executive has failed The proceedings in the Coalgate case earlier this week saw the Supreme Court asking the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) many uncomfortable questions. The Court also asked the government to tell it what steps it was going to take to enact a law to ensure the CBI's autonomy. The...

-The Times of India While disapproving law minister Ashwani Kumar's interference with the coal scam investigations, the Supreme Court invoked a 1997 judgment to drive home the message that even the Prime Minister, who has administrative jurisdiction over the CBI, did not have the power to do so. This was one of the highlights of the written order released on Thursday of the three-hour hearing the previous day in which the government...

-The Indian Express Almost a month after the Supreme Court dismissed convicted Khalistani terrorist Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar's plea that his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, German President Joachim Gauck and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle have written to their Indian counterparts seeking clemency for Bhullar. Bhullar, who was convicted for the 1993 car bomb blast outside the Youth Congress office in the capital in which nine people were killed, was...