-The Times of India While disapproving law minister Ashwani Kumar's interference with the coal scam investigations, the Supreme Court invoked a 1997 judgment to drive home the message that even the Prime Minister, who has administrative jurisdiction over the CBI, did not have the power to do so. This was one of the highlights of the written order released on Thursday of the three-hour hearing the previous day in which the government...

-The Times of India To the Government of India, Members of the Judiciary, and All Citizens, One of the most disastrous consequences of the strife in the tribal areas of central India is that thousands of adivasi men and women remain imprisoned as under-trials, often many years after being arrested, accused of 'Naxalite/ Maoist' offences. The facts speak for themselves. In Chhattisgarh, over two thousand adivasis are currently in jail, charged with 'Naxalite/Maoist'...

-Live Mint Even as India struggles in efforts to usher in transparency, some panchayats are offering a refreshing contrast Chandana/Jind: Sometime last year, Surendra Singh got a call from a military outpost in Srinagar. The soldier had an urgent inquiry for the 31-year-old sarpanch of Chandana, a village in Haryana's Kaithal district. The man, who hailed from the village, had lost his voter ID card and needed a letter from the...

-The Hindustan Times The Delhi high court on Thursday sought the Centre's reply on a public interest litigation which alleged that Public Information Officers (PIO) and the appellate authorities under the RTI Act are "resorting various tactics to avoid providing information" to information seekers. A division bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice Jayant Nath issued notices to the ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions, Delhi government, Central Information...

-The Economic Times The CBI manual contradicts the government's stance that it did no wrong in vetting the draft status report of the agency's probe in the coal allocation case, say legal experts, former CBI officials and activists. The manual says while CBI's superintendence is vested in the central government, its supervising authority is the Central Vigilance Commission in case of investigation of offences alleged to have been committed under the...