-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed the Haryana panchayati raj law stipulating educational qualifications for contesting the forthcoming local polls, which according to the petitioners created an insurmountable barrier for an overwhelming majority of women and Dalits. After hearing senior advocate Kirti Singh, a bench of Justices J Chelameswar and A M Sapre stayed the Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act, 2015, which mandated educational qualifications for...

-The Hindu District Mineral Foundations were set up to protect the interests of Adivasi communities who have borne the costs of mining. But they are flawed in their current form Through 2011-13, dogged investigators from the Justice M. B. Shah Commission on illegal mining toured the rust-red villages, forests and rivers of northern Odisha, and trawled through reams of official records including from the environment, minerals, railways, and revenue departments. They met...

-The Indian Express With assembly elections due next year, and whispers about how UPA sat on religion census data for fear of a backlash before the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress is maintaining a studied silence. In the decadal growth of the Muslim population of India between 2001 and 2011, the highest in terms of percentage points has been in Assam. Its Muslim population has risen from 30.9 per cent to...

-The Hindu Across the country, unless adequate jobs are created for the large labour force, the frustration of the youth is not likely to be contained. In Gujarat, the Patels or Patidars, who constitute about 15 per cent of the State’s population, are an economically and politically dominant upper caste. As successful farmers, as small and big industrialists, as traders as well as non-resident Gujaratis, spread practically all over the world, they...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India has set itself a challenging target to reduce maternal mortality rate to 70 per 1000 live births, and for neonatal and under-five to 12 and 25 per 1,000 births respectively under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved over the next 15 years. The consensus over the new targets was achieved within the government in a recent meeting of the health ministry and other...