-The Indian Express International treaties hold lessons for the Cauvery dispute. More than 80 per cent of Indian rivers are inter-state rivers. According to the Central Water Commission, there are 125 inter-state water agreements in India. Many of these agreements are more than 100 years old and had been executed without seriously considering socio-economic, political and geographical factors. These treaties have now become permanent sources of problems for many states. Continuous redrawing...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information on Friday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to put the proposed amendments to the RTI Act in the public domain in keeping with the government's policy of pre-legislative consultations. The policy, adopted in 2014, mandates that all draft legislation (including subordinate legislation) should be placed in the public domain for 30 days and comments invited from the public. It also requires...

-The Hindu Supreme Court verdict on the Act could increase the vulnerability of victims of atrocities, says ex-official GUNTUR (Andhra Pradesh): The Central government must bring an ordinance to remove the conditions imposed in the recent Supreme Court judgment in the implementation of the Prevention of Atrocities (SC, ST) Act, 1989 and remove all general observations made about it, said P.S. Krishnan, former Union Secretary, Ministry of Welfare, and member, National Monitoring...

-PTI New Delhi: The central information commission has directed the Bureau of Immigration, an agency exempted from RTI Act disclosures, to give a person details of his travel as he needed it for defence in penal proceedings that landed him in jail. The CIC underlined that any impediment to a person's self-defence would be a breach of human rights. The case pertains to RTI applicant M. Dinesh, who had sought information related to...

-The Telegraph Patna: Districts in Bihar would soon have dedicated officials who would be responsible for overseeing the implementation of the schemes run under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The officials would be known as district programme officer (DPO). "The appointments are going to be made for smooth running of schemes under MGNREGA and all the works related to these schemes would be supervised and coordinated by these officials," a...