-The Business Standard States often misuse emergency powers to muzzle protests from owners A new land acquisition law was on the anvil for years. The latest avatar of the Bill, not yet laid on the table of Parliament, is still being re-looked and reworked with nearly 160 changes proposed. Issues are many, like the "public purpose" fig leaf, the consent clause, sharing the compensation payment, resettlement and rehabilitation of the displaced people...

-IANS Delhi Police on Tuesday gave clean chit to eight people booked in constable Subhash Tomar's death during the anti-rape protests here in December last year. Appearing for the police, additional solicitor general (ASG) Sidharth Luthra told the court that no evidence was found to link the eight accused to the constable's death. However, Luthra said that they were involved in destruction of public property near India Gate during the protests against the...

-The Economic Times Almost every fortnight, Nandan Nilekani knocks on the doors of the Reserve Bank to push his case for making Aadhaar an easy gateway to a bank account. He has reached a frontier that, when crossed, could multiply the number of Indians, untouched by high-street banks, to have accounts. An inexpensive technology to execute this exists: the fingerprint of the person with a 12-digit individual identification number is all a...

-The Economist A steadily rising Muslim population continues to fall behind IT TELLS you something hopeful perhaps that, for all the horror unleashed when two bombs laid by presumed militant Islamists ripped through a crowd in Hyderabad on February 21st, India’s public response has been muted. The blasts killed 16 and injured 117. Both the method of the attack (bombs in metal tiffin boxes strapped to bicycles) and its location (near a...

-The Hindu A proposed legislation to make the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) a statutory body, the draft of which is in circulation among the States for comments, has made Education Department officials of States apprehensive. They fear that it will result in hundreds of elite schools affiliated to the Board going completely beyond their monitoring mechanism. While the rules of the Right to Education (RTE) Act give an important role...