-Hindustan Times The Union environment ministry has come out with a consultation paper on amending the Forest Conservation Act 1980 to bring significant changes to forest governance in India including facilitating private plantations for harvesting and exploration or extraction of oil and natural gas deep beneath forest land by drilling holes from outside the forest areas. Here are the highlights of the environment ministry’s proposal: Forests on private land Until December 1996, provisions of...

-The Telegraph The relatives of patients who succumb to Covid in the future will also be entitled to the Rs 50,000 ex gratia, according to the order The Supreme Court on Monday approved Rs 50,000 as ex gratia for relatives of the Covid dead over and above other compensation that they are entitled to or have already been given by respective state governments or authorities. The ex gratia should be disbursed by the...

-The Telegraph The observation came following a request from attorney-general K.K. Venugopal, who was representing the Centre along with solicitor-general Tushar Mehta The Supreme Court on Monday decided to examine the constitutionality of the farmers’ right to protest on a sub-judice issue, particularly when the controversial farm laws had been stayed and were “not in force”. The court said the “central issue” was “whether the right to protest is an absolute right”. It also...

-The Hindu The swell of public opinion in China has enabled government regulation and change in company policy On September 20, 2021, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers, on behalf of gig workers, filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court demanding that the Union government provide succour to workers affected by the pandemic. The petition has asked for ‘gig workers’ and ‘platform workers’ to be declared as ‘unorganised workers’...

-The Telegraph Development comes days after the NIC had received a rap from the SC for a similar embellishment of the court’s outgoing emails without its knowledge or permission A senior National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) official was aghast on Wednesday to learn that the Centre’s e-governance facilitator was appending to the rights watchdog’s outgoing emails a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his “sabka saath” slogan, a move he said...