-The Telegraph IIT faculty today invoked Jawaharlal Nehru to protect the schools’ autonomy, accusing the Union HRD ministry of “political interference” by proposing a single engineering entrance exam. The IIT faculty federation issued a statement saying its fight was “to protect the academic excellence and autonomy of the institutions envisioned by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru from any political interference”. The statement, issued by faculty federation secretary Atul Mittal, came a day after HRD minister...

The decision to reform the IIT selection process from next year by introducing a weightage for candidates’ Class XII board marks appears headed for a court battle. Alumni association members from the IITs of Delhi, Kanpur and Kharagpur met here today and decided to move “various high courts” within a week against the IIT Council’s “unilateral” decision that overruled objections from several IIT senates. IIT teachers and senates have cited how the...

If the Bill seeking to protect children from sexual offences is passed by Parliament in the form in which it was cleared last week by the Cabinet, then there will be a direct but unstated conflict between the general and special laws on rape. Under the special law proposed in the freshly revised "Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Bill" , no person below 18 years will have the legal capability...

**page** [inside]KEY TRENDS of the Union Budget 2023-24[/inside] Budget 2023-24 is the last full budget before the general election scheduled for 2024. An analysis of the budget allocations suggests that the union government has squeezed expenditure, particularly on food subsidy and the NREGA budget, while boosting Capital expenditure and giving the middle class tax benefits. Social sector activists working on Right to Food, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) came out with...