-The Hindu   Government committed to protect minorities, says Gehlot The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has asked the Rajasthan Government to sensitise the police and the administration on the minorities and provide more representation to minority youth in the State police force. Talking in the context of the September 14 violence near Gopalgarh Masjid in Bharatpur district which resulted in ten deaths, the Commission advised the government to take steps to “improve the...

-PTI The Supreme Court Friday granted the Centre three weeks to spell out its stand on the extent of immunity enjoyed by Army personnel under the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and other laws for fake encounter killings. The bench passed the direction on CBI's application for vacating the stay granted by the apex court on the trial in a J&K court relating to the killing of six youth by...

-The Indian Express   The Supreme Court on Friday gave the Army three weeks’ time to detail the extent of immunity enjoyed by Army personnel under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. A bench of Justices was hearing a CBI plea to vacate a SC stay on the trial in a J&K court on the killing of seven youths allegedly by the Army. The incident is said to be a retaliation for the...

In a remote Indian village in the Western state of Maharashtra, a fourth-grader named Suraj Balu Zore proudly told IPS that he can now effortlessly operate a laptop computer. Fallen by the wayside of urban India’s information technology (IT) superhighway, Khairat village – located just 80 kilometres from booming Mumbai – still has no access to the Internet.  But thanks to the recent efforts of ‘one laptop per child’ – a project...

There are serious concerns over shortages of food and housing as the country's population is expected to reach 1.45bn by 2035 The Madanpur Khadr colony is a tenement slum on the southern outskirts of Delhi, the Indian capital. A decade ago there was nothing here but green fields, buffaloes wallowing, goats grazing and the odd small dwelling. Now an estimated 40,000 people live in ramshackle, five-storey, brick and concrete homes, 10 to...