The proposed land acquisition Bill should adopt scores of suggestions coming from judges. Few laws have drawn criticism from the Supreme Court with such regular frequency as has the Land Acquisition Act, all the more so in recent times as the weak links in the archaic law have led to continuing legal and political battles and bloodletting. Last month, the Supreme Court identified five areas of conflict arising from the inadequacies of...

Activist Gopal Krishna makes a case that the Unique Identification Number project is a gross violation of fundamental human rights and points out that a similar project/law in Britain is going to be repealed. This is with reference to a privacy invasion project which is relevant to India and all the democratic countries of the world. The very first bill that is to be presented by the UK's new coalition...

Taking a serious view of 150 Dalit families from Mirchpur village in Haryana's Hisar district being forced to leave the village after two of them were killed allegedly by the dominant Jat community, the Supreme Court on Monday issued a stern notice to the Haryana Government for its response to a petition highlighting their plight. Mirchpur, about 150 km from Delhi, is a large village comprising about 1,700 Jat (dominant caste)...

Delhi High Court today told the Centre to form a committee of technical and medical experts to examine potential health hazards from mobile phone towers, saying the issue was more important than monetary considerations. The court order said whether radio waves “pose any serious health threat or not, and what precautions are required to be taken so that there are minimal chances of causing any threat to the health of...

In a bid to curb the misuse of free information under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, the state information commissioner has recommended that not more than 100 page-photocopies should be given free of cost to those below the poverty line. Chief information commissioner Suresh Joshi said the clause under which information is given free of cost to below poverty line persons, was being misused. He cited a case where...