-TheWire.in Basheer was the founder and managing trustee of Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access or IDIA, a body which aims at bringing legal awareness to the underprivileged. Legal scholar, intellectual property rights activist and Public Interest litigator Shamnad Basheer passed away on Thursday, in an accident at Chikkamagaluru in Karnataka, reports say. He was 43. Basheer was the founder and managing trustee of Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access or IDIA, a body which...

-Down to Earth The court’s suggestions, like making MSP a legal right and increasing it to thrice the cost of production, are practical but need effort in implementation, say experts The Punjab and Haryana high court recently recommended that minimum support price (MSP) be made farmers’ legal right and it be set at three times the cost of production. But will these or a slew of other measures the court suggested address...

-Scroll.in The court asked the Reserve Bank of India why it felt the need to constantly change the sizes and features of currency notes and coins. The Bombay High Court on Thursday said the government’s demonetisation exercise showed that it was a myth that fake currency was in circulation. While hearing hearing a Public Interest litigation seeking to make currency notes and coins easily identifiable for vision-impaired people, the court asked the Reserve...

-The Hindu Protesters launch mass RTI campaign, raise questions on controversial issues New Delhi: Right to Information activists attempting to deliver a petition against the RTI Amendments Bill to the President via his Secretariat were detained outside Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday. Later, they launched a new campaign to bombard the government with a mass RTI campaign raising queries on prickly issues of Public Interest, from the Unnao rape case and the Rafale defence...

-The Hindu When data is monetised, as the Economic Survey advocates, it becomes toxic and harms Public Interest Last year, I was denied information requested under the Right to Information Act (RTI) 2005. I had sought the names of agencies empanelled by the Unique Identification Authority of India for an “image makeover” and the expenditure on it. It was denied by invoking the exemption clauses of Sections 8(d) and 8(j), respectively, i.e....