-The Times of India DalTONGANJ: For the 22-odd tribal families living on the Jaigeer hill area, 3,133 feet above sea level and surrounded by hills from four sides - life means total confinement. This village is bereft of roads and electricity as well as drinking water and irrigation. There is only one school. Deprived of basic infrastructure, these families have been asked to relocate since their village and several others fall under...

-BBC A legislator, who was kidnapped by Maoist rebels in the eastern Indian state of Orissa more than a month ago, is likely to be released on Thursday. The rebels said the decision to free Jhina Hikaka was taken at a meeting of the "praja court" (people's court). Mr Hikaka was abducted in the early hours of 24 March while returning home after attending a meeting. The government had earlier offered to free some...

The National Advisory Council will ask the Centre to focus the ongoing socio-economic caste census on enumerating and classifying denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, or DNTs. The plan is to give these groups priority while issuing unique identity cards and introducing laws that will grant them explicit recognition on the lines of the 1992 statute on minorities. The NAC said special directives must be issued to the housing and urban poverty alleviation...

-The Economic Times Last week's acquittal by the Patna High Court of all the accused in the Bathani Tola massacre of 1996 - in which 21 Dalits, including women and infants, were killed by members of an upper-caste/landlord militia called the Ranvir Sena, in this area of central Bihar - is shocking testimony to the ineptness, and worse, of the police and the administration in prosecuting the guilty. Given the fact that...

-The Business Standard One correction - and more to come? Several developments in the Supreme Court over illegal mining of iron ore in Karnataka indicate that only the first chapter of a long-running story has been brought to a satisfactory end. The whole story offers a valuable insight into practices of governance and ways of doing business in India. The first chapter began over half a decade ago, with a report by...