-PTI The Supreme Court today refused to quash criminal proceedings against former BJP chief Bangaru Laxman for allegedly receiving Rs one lakh bribe from undercover scribes to favour them in a 'fictitious' defence deal.  A bench headed by Justice A K Ganguly refused to interfere in the proceedings of the lower court, which is conducting the trial in the case, and dismissed the plea of the 72-year-old politician.  The court, however, made it...

The return of peace and normalcy in Kashmir is a reality. And to ensure a durable and lasting peace, a humane approach to handle the law and order situation may be required. In a vibrant, democratic country, authoritarian ways of suppressing people’s voices prove to be counterproductive. It may be recalled that the law and order situation in Kashmir worsened in the aftermath of unfair and rigged assembly elections of 1987,...

-The Telegraph   Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is sticking to her position on Maoist sympathisers and seems to be in no hurry to break the ice with writer Mahasweta Devi, who yesterday called her government “fascist”. “Mamatadi is concerned about the attacks on our workers in Jungle Mahal and, as an administrator, she feels those responsible should be brought to book. Supporting their cause can’t be allowed,” said a Trinamul Congress source. The source...

The anti-corruption movement has enabled the Indian middle class to feel smug about itself. Its members have gone through a vast range of emotions during the last two decades, from self-hatred to self-righteousness. Liberalisation of the economy has created for this class an excitement of many kinds. It has meant the freedom to pursue the quest for wealth without guilt and, at the same time, it has meant feeling set...

At the technical level, the question is whether the technology deployed for identification will return answers that are unambiguous. THE Unique Identification (UID) project, the national project of the Government of India, aims to give a unique 12-digit number – called Aadhaar – to every citizen of the country, a random number that is generated and linked to a person's demographic and biometric information. The key word is “unique”. Launched in...