-The Hindu The Gujarat snooping incident should be used as an opportunity to ask how the government has assumed the power to order such invasive, unchecked surveillance. On November 15, a pair of investigative portals released a set of audio transcripts depicting an extraordinarily invasive and scrupulous surveillance of a young woman by the Gujarat Police. Its implications, limited as they may appear to those who consider privacy a besmirched value, in...

-Kafila.org This fact-finding exercise was coordinated by the CENTRE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS. Team members were the human rights activist and former civil servant Harsh Mander; former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E N Rammohan; Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University; National Integration Council member John Dayal; senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and CPA Director and senior editor Seema Mustafa. Introduction and Overview The first impression of the Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green...

-Outlook Ahmedabad: Social activist and Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar today told a local court that the attack during a public meeting at Sabarmati Ashram here after the 2002 riots was a part of a "conspiracy" to kill her. Patkar today deposed before Metropolitan Magistrate A S Desai, in connection with her complaint about the incident that took place eleven years ago. "I feel that this episode was a conspiracy to kill...

-IANS Those who cherish India's constitutional values will find Gujarat Chief Minister Narenda Modi's boast to build a state of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (India's first home minister and deputy prime minister) taller than the Statue of Liberty rather chilling. By prizing nationalism over individual freedom, Modi may have once again revealed his illiberal nature. People who dislike this aspect of him, Leftists mainly, give vent to their disapproval by dismissing Modi's development...

-The Hindu Mumbai: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has named Gulab Chand Kataria, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from Rajasthan, in the supplementary charge sheet it filed on Tuesday in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case. The former Rajasthan Home Minister is the second prominent BJP leader to be named in the case after the former Gujarat Home Minister, Amit Shah. Sessions court in Mumbai has issued...