-The Hindu Supreme Court verdict on the Act could increase the vulnerability of victims of atrocities, says ex-official GUNTUR (Andhra Pradesh): The Central government must bring an ordinance to remove the conditions imposed in the recent Supreme Court judgment in the implementation of the Prevention of Atrocities (SC, ST) Act, 1989 and remove all general observations made about it, said P.S. Krishnan, former Union Secretary, Ministry of Welfare, and member, National Monitoring...

-The Hindu The problem with the SC/ST Act is the failure of the criminal justice system to recognise its own casteist biases For India’s Dalits and Adivasis, May 1 this year was a ‘May Day’ in more ways than one. It was May Day, the day to commemorate the labour movement (the vast majority of them do belong to the working classes), and also ‘mayday’ in the maritime sense, an occasion to...

-Livemint.com Crimes against Dalit women constitute the biggest category of crimes against Dalits registered under the SC/ST Act Mumbai: A dilution of the stringent provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 is going to affect Dalit women far more than men. Nearly a fifth of cases registered under the Atrocities Act are crimes against women. If one excludes the category “others” (which includes various miscellaneous crimes), crimes...

-The Hindu Asks party MPs to spend a night each in villages where SC/STs make up majority Four days after the Union government filed a review petition in the Supreme Court on its orders concerning the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asked BJP MPs to reach out to villages where 50% or more of the population belonged to these communities. He was...

-The Hindu The court says it has only protected innocents from falling prey to arbitrary arrests under the Act. The Supreme Court said its March 20 judgment, banning immediate arrest of a person accused of insulting or injuring a Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe member, is meant to protect innocents from arbitrary arrest and not an affront to Dalit rights. The government, despite an urgent and open court hearing of its review petition, failed to...