Central Information Commission (CIC) has come out with a landmark resolution to combat unending assaults on right to information (RTI) activists. According to the resolution, if the commission receives a complaint regarding an assault on or murder of an information-seeker, it will examine pending RTI applications of the victim and order the departments to publish the requested information suo motu on their websites. The resolution was mooted by information commissioner Shailesh...

-The Telegraph   Had it not been for a tub of hot water and a celebrated judge in England in 1949, Bengal’s Singur law may have found itself in legal hot water. Justice I.P. Mukerji, who delivered the Singur judgment, was guided by a 62-year-old English case that dealt with hot water supply by a landlord, according to the order issued on Wednesday. The Calcutta judge used the principle of “purposive interpretation”, which figured...

-BBC   A court in India has ruled that West Bengal's state government acted legally in reclaiming land where Tata Motors wanted to build its low-cost Nano car. The 1,000-acre plot of land was acquired in 2006 by the state's former communist government and leased to the company for 99 years. The new state government took back the land in June to return it to farmers. Tata challenged the move in the high court in...

The state government has defined regulations for the implementation of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, in all schools in the state. After a cabinet decision earlier this month, the state government had decided to extend primary education up to std VIII, to allow 25 per cent students from economically backward class in to private schools, etc. Minister of school education, Rajendra Darda, said, "The rules have...

I got a call around midnight in the Delhi summer. It was Lingaram, the young Muria adivasi from Sameli village in Dantewada, then studying in Noida’s International Media Institute of India. Linga’s misfortunes never seem to end: first he was accused of helping the Maoists, then tortured in the police station toilet, forced to be a special police officer, then released thanks to a habeas corpus petition. In a few months,...