-Press release by National Alliance of Peoples' Movements  dated 28 November, 2019 In yet another of its egregious legislative misadventures, the BJP Government with support from some other parties, passed the regressive 'Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights)' Bill, in the Rajya Sabha yesterday, despite wide-spread opposition by members of the transgender, intersex and gender non-confirming communities, seeking referral of the Bill to a Select Committee. We have all been witness to...

-The Telegraph The activists were speaking against the backdrop of the govt weakening the RTI architecture through amendments The Supreme Court judgment bringing the Chief Justice of India’s office under the Right to Information Act was welcomed by RTI activists but some of them disagreed with the observation of one of the judges that the “right to information should not be allowed to be used as a tool of surveillance to scuttle...

-Scroll.in A poorly-functioning justice system costs India 9% of its GDP each year, according to one estimate. A new report paints a grim picture of the state of India’s justice system. Called the India Justice Report 2019, it ranks states by their performance in four aspects: police, the state judiciary, prisons and legal aid. The report is an initiative of Tata Trusts, a philanthropic organisation, undertaken in partnership with several civil society organisations...

-IANS Uttar Pradesh and Bihar shared the last and second last spot among the 18 large and mid-sized states in the report. New Delhi: Maharashtra topped the list of India's first-ever ranking of states on justice delivery among the 18 large and mid-sized states. Maharashtra is followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu, while among the small states Goa topped the list followed by Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh, according to the India Justice Report...

-The Indian Express What is needed is ‘ease of policing’, better training and infrastructure Common Cause’s recent survey on the Status of Policing in India is said to have affirmed that the black sheep in the police force find nothing wrong with beating up criminals to extract a confession. It is still, however, too judgemental to suggest that torture is endemic to Indian policing, as Maja Daruwala does (‘Exorcising third-degree’, IE,...