Barring a brief tiff with media persons near the sit-in site in Bharatpur, situation during the ongoing Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan remained under control, police said on Thursday. There is no report of protest or further blockade from anywhere in the state, even as Gujjars continued to squat on the Delhi-Mumbai rail tracks on the fourth consecutive day demanding five per cent reservation, they said. Vehicular traffic is plying normally...

In a 12 December interview, Director-General of the J&K Police (JKP) Kuldeep Khoda was questioned by Tribune journalist Jupinderjit Singh about complaints that the JKP was ignoring RTI applications.  At one point, Mr. Khoda stated that the Police  “will not entertain [RTI applications] on investigations of any case,” explaining this information “could help the accused due to which the department generally discouraged such applications.” The DGP’s stance is problematic.  On one...

In the capital of migrants, crime and loose tongues that is Delhi, it wasn’t unusual that Union home minister P. Chidambaram made the lazy connection that migrants are responsible for the city’s rising crime graph. After all, chief minister Sheila Dikshit has also done that before—only to recant when it was met with outrage, the way Chidambaram eventually did. That leaders at Chidambaram’s and Sheila’s level could be so simplistic...

No matter how tired we are in the course of a difficult day’s work, there is always the reassuring feeling that at the end of the hard work we’ll go back to sleep in the comfort of our home. But there are millions of people in our cities who simply do not have a home. The homeless of our cities suffer the most; yet they are the most neglected. No...

Legal experts have called for repealing of anti-beggary laws and demanded effective implementation of welfare and social security laws for enhancing sources of livelihood for the beggars. Usha Ramanathan, law researcher, Poverty and Rights, New Delhi, and B.B. Pande, former professor of Law, University of Delhi, said prevention and prohibition of beggary laws enacted in several States have infringed upon individual liberties and have provided powers to State authorities to round...