In recent times the Supreme Court of India, with a series of remarkable decisions, has earned our admiration, respect and gratitude. Alas, it has now come out with an extraordinary order on the Inter-Linking of Rivers (ILR) Project, which has caused consternation and dismay to many of us. In 2002, in a post-retirement explanation, a defensive Justice Kirpal had said that his order on the river-linking project was not a direction...

Lax policemen made Jharkhand’s borders porous and helped child trafficking, a shocked National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) found on its second day of public hearing here today. In the cases that came to the commission for hearing, it was revealed that the police sat idle and deaf to frantic pleas of people whose minor children went missing. The members of the commission rebuked the state police for being...

A goof-up created by the law officer representing the Ministry of Home Affairs today ended up revealing a significant shift in the government’s view on homosexuality. A day-long hearing in the Supreme Court saw Additional Solicitor General P P Malhotra, representing the home ministry, argue that homosexuality is an “unnatural offence” — the exact line the government took in the Delhi High Court. In fact, a reference to the records filed by...

A village wedding in Madhya Pradesh stood out for one reason on Tuesday: the groom had chosen to go ahead with the marriage after learning the bride had been raped two days earlier. The groom, a Class XII dropout and farmer, told this newspaper that it was his duty to stand by the bride and fight her battle for justice together. “It is a testing time for her for no fault of...

-The Times of India   In what is a first in Andhra Pradesh, 101 workers in Medak district have been awarded unemployment allowance to the tune of Rs 2 lakh for having been denied work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The award is being seen as an assertion of wage earners' rights under the Act as this is the first time that they have earned compensation for not...