-TheWire.in While illegal mining is worrying, what is little understood is the enormous loot that is taking place legally. Mineral owners sometimes receive less than 5% of the value of minerals. The three iron ore scams in Karnataka, Goa and Odisha have some things in common. There were widespread and diverse breaches of the constitution, Laws, rules and regulations. The environment was badly damaged. The minerals were being exhausted. Enormous corruption was...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to clarify on Monday that no coercive steps will be taken to make Aadhaar mandatory till a constitution bench rules on the scheme's validity. The directive came in spite of the Centre seeking to assuage concerns by extending the deadline for linking the Aadhaar number to various facilities from December 31 to March 31, next year, for those who do not...

-The Indian Express Move to criminalise cyber speech will add impunity to power How to police a cyber space that has acquired the instincts of Frankenstein’s monster? In pursuit of answers, an expert committee submitted an interim report to the Union Home Ministry a couple of weeks ago. The recommended amendments to the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are noteworthy for two reasons. One, they bring within the ambit of IPC (through amendments...

-The Indian Express Vasundhara Raje government will present The Code of Criminal Procedure (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill to replace the ordinance during this Assembly session. The Editors Guild of India has expressed “deep concern” about the Rajasthan Government’s decision to make the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance 2017 into an Act in the current legislative session. “(It) was ostensibly done to protect the judiciary and the bureaucracy against false FIRs. But in reality it...

-Scroll.in The food safety authority looked away as the environment ministry kept clearing consignments of genetically modified soyabean and canola oils from abroad. Violating Laws governing food safety in India, the central government has over the last five years allowed more than 15 million tonnes of genetically modified soyabean and canola oils to be imported into the country for human consumption. That such imports were illegal came to light with the Food...