-The Hindu   The Supreme Court on Thursday said “every citizen has a right to establish and administer educational institution[s] under Article 19(1) (g) so long as the activity remains charitable. Such an activity undertaken by the private institutions supplements the primary obligation of the state. Thus, the state can regulate by law the activities of the private institutions by imposing reasonable restrictions under Article 19(6).” A Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia...

Unless data gathering for the Socio Economic and Caste Census is refined, the exercise could cast out the real claimants. Have the census enumerators recently knocked on your door with swanky tablet computers in hand? If they have, it's because they have begun to go door-to-door in most States to complete the final phase of the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC). This mammoth exercise is being coordinated by more than...

-CNN-IBN   The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Constitutional validity of the Right to Education Act, saying that there will be 25 per cent reservation in government, local authority schools and private schools for children from the economically weaker sections of the society.   A bench comprising Chief Justice SH Kapadia and justices KS Radhakrishnan and Swantanter Kumar, which had reserved its verdict on August 3, 2011, upheld the validity of provisions of...

-The Indian Express   A magazine published by a trust headed by a senior RSS leader claims to have become the most widely circulated periodical for children in the country. The sudden swell in readership is thanks to the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh, which has taken a lifelong subscription of Devputra for primary and secondary schools. The circulation has leapfrogged to 3,71,438.   The state education centre paid the trust, Saraswati Bal Kalyan...

An unnecessary controversy has been started by the release of the poverty estimates of 2009-10 by the planning commission. The controversy, which was entirely avoidable, was allowed to go on because of the poor handling of the issue by the planning commission. It is unfortunate that the planning commission was less than willing to own the Tendulkar committee report which was submitted in December 2009 and accepted by the commission...