Cabinet clears change in divorce law: Women to get part of husband’s property In a move that could be a setback to land acquisition for commercial use, a parliamentary committee unanimously recommended that the government should not acquire land for industrial, commercial or for-profit enterprises or private companies. Instead, the panel, which has proposed legislation favouring landowners, recommends that private companies and public-private partnerships would have to buy land in the open...

-The Hindustan Times The parliamentary standing committee on rural development is slated to submit on Thursday its report on the much-awaited land acquisition bill — with suggestions for tough norms that would make it very difficult to acquire land for industry. The committee, it is understood, has suggested that ‘public purpose’ be clearly defined to prevent profit-making industries from taking advantage of the law under the guise of producing public goods...

The IT (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, drafted to protect intermediaries, now appear to be a tool that can be used to harass them. EIGHT years ago, the chief executive officer of an auction portal was put behind bars because a user put an obscene MMS clip up for sale on the site. This sparked a demand from intermediaries, the entities that provide services enabling the delivery of online content to end-users,...

RAJDEEP SARDESAI, one of the most visible faces of Indian news television today, is the Editor-in-Chief of IBN18 Network which includes CNN-IBN, IBN7 and Lokmat. He has made a name for himself in his 22 years of television journalism with his incisive political reporting of events such as the Gujarat carnage of 2002. As a television anchor, he is known for his signature conversational style. Sardesai has also served as...

Religious and social groups have trampled on the freedom of expression of artists and scholars to serve their own agendas. “FOR all the big talk about India's great tradition of cultural and religious tolerance, many forces in the social life of our country and a number of established organisations, including the so-called non-political ones, have time and again resorted to blatant suppression of freedom of expression, pointing forcefully to the...