-The Hindustan Times The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre whether it had obtained presidential nod to start UPA government's flagship scheme of issuing Aadhaar cards by the Unique Identification Authority of India. A three-judge bench posed the query during the hearing of a bunch of petitions challenging the scheme on the ground it had no "legal sanctity." It even observed there was nothing wrong if the government made Citizens join...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Backed by villagers and displaced people from different states, members of 200 NGOs from across the country on Monday slammed environment and forests minister M Veerappa Moily for ignoring environment and social concerns while granting speedy clearances to mining and infrastructure projects. Alleging that recent clearances pointed to "high corruption", the groups wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. They also demanded immediate rollback of the...

-The Hindu     The UPA government's response to questions on Aadhaar's voluntariness continues to be marked by ‘intentional ambiguity.' Compulsion by stealth is used to camouflage the use of Aadhaar as a neo-liberal policy tool "This debate is ... about our specific disagreement on the meaning of that one word," i.e. "the Government now seek to persuade us that ‘voluntary' actually means ‘compulsory'." That was Nick Clegg in the United Kingdom's House of Commons...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Right to Information mechanism is sought to be diluted by certain bodies by the arbitrary use of pre-existing procedures and rules which were enacted at a time when Citizens' right to information had little or no consequence. These rules also lack procedural safeguards and have onerous fees devoid of any reasonableness. The aggrieved citizen had no choice but to approach the courts. This trend must be...

-IANS     ‘I would like to see films on invisible Citizens' Kolkata: Filmmaker Aparna Sen on Friday lamented the dearth of movies in India showcasing the plight of the marginalised communities and the urban and rural poor. She said the Indian audience was receptive today to different genre of cinema and formula-based films no longer satisfied them. "I ask young filmmakers why they don't show the stories of the poor ... those living in villages,...