-The Indian Express Censuring the government for "clumsily" drafting laws and "inviting problems", the Supreme Court Wednesday stood by its landmark ruling that MPs and MLAs will be disqualified immediately if convicted in a criminal case by a trial court. A Bench of Justices A K Patnaik and S J Mukhopadhaya, however, agreed to reconsider whether a person in lawful custody also stands disqualified from contesting polls. "There is no error apparent...

One landmark law, the Right to Information Act, has helped over a thousand adivasis in north Maharashtra in getting closer to their rights under another landmark law – the Forest Rights Act. The latter was legislated in 2006 giving forest dwelling and other adivasi communities individual and community rights to lands they had traditionally cultivated and occupied. But communities in rural India have faced an uphill battle in getting the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday admitted that it had erred by directing the government to appoint only retired apex court judges and high court chief justices as heads of information commissions at the central and state levels. Restoring the position provided under the Right To Information Act for appointment of chiefs of information commissions, a bench of Justices A K Patnaik and A K Sikri erased...

-The Hindu Biomass cookstoves and solar lighting improve the health of women and are creating business models that empower them Around the world three billion people have no access to modern cooking fuels. They depend mostly on direct burning of solid biomass for cooking and heating. The smoke from these rudimentary stoves causes some four million deaths annually, destroys millions of tonnes of crops and leads to global warming and large-scale regional...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The National Food Security Bill, which seeks to provide heavily-subsidized food to two-thirds of India's 1.23 billion people, was passed by the Rajya Sabha on Monday. Much like what happened in the Lok Sabha last week, there was a scramble among political parties to garner populist brownie points even as they differed fiercely on certain provisions of the bill and their implementation. With the Congress all...