-The Hindu Asks party MPs to spend a night each in villages where SC/STs make up majority Four days after the Union government filed a review petition in the Supreme Court on its orders concerning the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asked BJP MPs to reach out to villages where 50% or more of the population belonged to these communities. He was...

-The Hindu The court says it has only protected innocents from falling prey to arbitrary arrests under the Act. The Supreme Court said its March 20 judgment, banning immediate arrest of a person accused of insulting or injuring a Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe member, is meant to protect innocents from arbitrary arrest and not an affront to Dalit rights. The government, despite an urgent and open court hearing of its review petition, failed to...

-TheCitizen.in Number of crimes against Dalits have gone up substantially It has again come up prominently in the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) “Crime in India-2016” Report that BJP ruled States outdo other states in atrocities against Dalits (Scheduled Castes). As in 2015. At present the BJP rules Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Goa and Jharkhand where Dalit atrocities cases are more than the non-BJP ruled states. In other states ruled...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has said it is examining the "desirability of filing a review petition" against last week's Supreme Court order diluting the SC-ST Act, ending days of dithering amid mounting pressure from allies and Dalit BJP parliamentarians. "I have instructed my ministry to examine the desirability of filing a review in this case. Appropriate actions are being taken," Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said at a news...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The concern over the silence of the Prime Minister on the dilution of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act has spread beyond Dalit MPs in the NDA. Junior human resource development minister and BJP ally Upendra Kushwaha on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the government should immediately move the Supreme Court against the order that prevents immediate arrest over complaints of...