-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a pronouncement that reiterates the constitutional protection to freedom of speech and expression, the Supreme Court has said that unwitting or careless "insults" to religion should not be prosecuted as this would amount to misuse of law. Concerned by the misuse of Section 295A of IPC, which provides up to three years' jail term for hurting religious sentiments, the Supreme Court limited the applicability of...

-Frontline.in The Aadhaar project’s headlong push towards “total” enrolment of Indian citizens threatens the privacy of individuals on an unprecedented scale, while its patchy biometric system acts as a tool of denial for the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the UID chugs along, regardless, fuelled by the avarice of private interests who seek to cash in on citizen data. IN the last seven years, the right to privacy of Indian citizens has been...

-Business Standard Not only is your privacy stripped stark naked, the system itself is illegal and vulnerable Indians have serious red tape PTSD. We live with chronic anxiety about the documents that get us the entitlements and paid services we need — food, cooking gas, SIM cards, sale deeds, passports and so on. We’re so tyrannised by bureaucracy that when we hear of an official document that might simplify life, we fall...

-Scroll.in RTIs filed by Scroll.in show complaints about enrolling agencies demanding bribes and doing fraud enrolments. On Wednesday, the Unique Identification Authority of India said that it had blacklisted the enrolment agency that had inadvertently leaked details of former Indian cricket team captain MS Dhoni’s application to join the Aadhaar programme. The day before, Dhoni’s wife Sakshi had sent a tweet to Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad informing him of...

-Scroll.in In this environment of majoritarianism, we must seriously consider proportional representation, adds SY Quraishi. SY Quraishi, who was Chief Election Commissioner from July 2011 to June 2012, is known to be outspoken about several issues regarding electoral reform both when he was in the Election Commission and after he retired. He has asked for public funding of political parties, putting an expenditure cap on them, financial transparency among parties, and...