-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A ministerial panel is learnt to be taking a final look at a proposal which seeks to raise the income bar defining "creamy layer" for OBC reservation to Rs 8 lakh per annum. The Cabinet note sent by the social justice ministry has been lying with the government for nearly one year and is in the final stages of approval. According to those in the know,...

-The Economic Times CHENNAI: The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court has granted an interim stay on the implementation of rules banning the sale and purchase of cattle for slaughter at animal fairs — notified by the central government in May — marking the first judicial pronouncement on an issue that has sparked off heated debate countrywide. The court on Tuesday, in response to a public interest litigation filed by Madurai-based...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-Hindustan Times The animating impulse of Indian politics, pundits of all stripes insist, is youthful aspiration: fearless young people throwing off the shackles of caste and class to Whatsapp their way to what the Prime Minister likes to call “vikas”. Parties like the Bharatiya Janta Party understand this, the argument goes, and are handsomely rewarded; the opposition doesn’t, and is doomed to failure. But a recent CSDS-KAS survey paints a rather different picture:...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government today denied any move to introduce reservations in the private sector, saying there was "no such proposal", a year after the National Commission for Backward Classes had suggested enacting a law to make private firms set aside jobs for marginalised sections. "There is no such proposal (for reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes) in the private sector," social justice and empowerment minister...