-The Hindu   Orissa High Court today issued notices to the State and Central governments and Posco India on a PIL alleging illegal forest clearance granted in favour of the company for a steel plant in Jagatsinghpur district. A division bench of Chief Justice V Gopal Gowda and Justice B N Mohapatra of the HC issued the notices after preliminary hearing on a PIL and adjourned the matter to be heard again...

The Centre for Internet & Societies (CIS), a Bangalore-based NGO, recently filed an RTI query with the Department of Information Technology (DIT), asking for a list of websites blocked by the Indian government under the IT Act. The department handed them a list of 11 websites. It was just one department’s list, but this was the first time such a list was being made public. “The information given was not...

Bangalore-based lawyer Sajan Poovayya is an outside counsel to Google Inc. and other Internet companies who have been sued in India for content on their Web sites that users or authorities deem objectionable. Having been through many such cases, he’s in a good position to assess how a new set of controversial Indian Internet regulations affect the landscape. His verdict: the rules are sloppy, vague, perhaps unconstitutional, and wind up exposing...

The Jan Lokpal is being vested with sweeping powers, which are susceptible to misuse. The centralised structure of the Lokpal will be ill-suited for sorting out governance deficit. People will be confined to being complainants and applicants. There is need to make the Jan Lokpal people-centric FOR many who quite rightly guessed that the Lokpal Bill drafted by the government would be a non-starter, the alternative merited automatic support. However, little...

-The Times of India   An unmarried Hindu woman is entitled to equal share in ancestral or coparcenery property along with other male members under the amended Hindu Succession Act, the Supreme Court has held. Coparcenary refers to equal inheritance which was restricted only to male members of the Hindu Undivided Family but after succesive amendements several states have chosen to extend the benefit to unmarried female members too. A bench of justices...