-The Hindu Parliament inserted Section 61 A in the Act concerned to legitimise the use of EVMs Kochi (Kerala): The Electronic voting machines (EVMs), now ubiquitous, had a troubled beginning when the gadgets were first introduced in the country, in some of the polling booths of the Paravur Assembly constituency in Ernakulam district in the 1982 Assembly poll. Locked in the battle then were the late Congress leader A.C. Jose and CPI leader...

-The Hindu Surveys conducted by activists estimate that there are over 1.2 million manual scavengers in India As numbers become data and move from being just a random rearrangement of 0-9, they speak volumes about peoples, nations, and their objectives. They form the basis of government policies, and have the intrinsic potential to change lives, correct historical wrongs and national trajectories. The last election results, we were told, were a message from ‘Aspirational...

-Livemint.com/ AP Hundreds of millions of people in at least 13 states are reeling from severe drought, a situation that is expected to worsen in the coming months Shahapur: Shantabai Babulkar’s day begins before dawn with a 5 kilometer trek across barren fields and dusty scrubland to fetch water from a distant well for her family. The two metal pots of muddy water that Babulkar, 58, balances on her head and a...

Publicly available data collected and collated by the civil society organization DAKSH under the Rule of Law Project shows that in the 21 High Courts of India, the average pendency of cases is over 3 years i.e. 1,141 days, as on 11 April, 2016. The oldest case in a High Court has been pending since 1 January, 1958, which indicates the extent of delay in getting justice in India. The 21 high...

-The Hindu In a much-needed measure to keep the consumption of chewing tobacco under check, the Delhi government has extended by a year the ban on the sale, purchase and storage of all forms of chewable tobacco — scented, flavoured and mixed — sold in forms such as gutka, pan masala, khaini and zarda. The extension of the ban has come after the previous notification expired recently. In 2012, a few...