The Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court challenging the Madras High Court judgment striking down ultra vires the amendment to the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education Act to defer implementation of the ‘Samacheer system'. The special leave petition directed against the High Court judgment dated July 18 is likely to the mentioned for early hearing on Thursday. On behalf of students and parents, caveats had also...

Anna Hazare's campaign against corruption has a curious side-effect. It has turned the spotlight on India's lack of pre-legislative transparency. We may accept or dismiss team Anna's Jan Lokpal draft but his movement — and the subsequent build-up of hope and betrayal — has unwittingly exposed the systemic opaqueness in which our laws are conceived, written, debated and passed. The Lokpal Bill 2011 is one among 67-odd bills listed as...

A host of steel-manufacturing units are keen to set up plants in Karnataka, and all want captive mines. SOUTH KOREA'S Posco is not the only steel-maker keen to do business in Karnataka. The State's estimated 9,000 million tonnes of good-quality iron ore reserves, which is the second largest in India, the State government's assurances on a smooth land acquisition process, the availability of water and the promise of speedy regulatory clearances...

While ‘data exclusivity’ clauses will not feature in the India-European Union free trade agreement (FTA), the threat posed by the impending deal to the world’s supply of cheap generic drugs is far from over. India’s commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma assured Michel Sidibe, chief of the United Nations joint programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) at a meeting this week that India would reject attempts by pharmaceutical giants to include...

A Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Sudershan Reddy and Surinder Singh Nijjar passed orders in two politically sensitive cases this week.These orders have caused much controversy over the role of judiciary in constitutional cases. In the first of the two cases, Nandini Sundar v State of Chattisgarh, the judges held that the armed deployment of ill-trained, uneducated and poor tribal youths in combat operations against Naxals by appointing them as...