On the night of June 21,  around 10 p.m., the police of West Bengal’s Hooghly district descended on Tata Motors’ half-built Singur plant and threw out the private guards there. In about half an hour, the new government in West Bengal, under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee, took over the 997 acres that had proved to be the Waterloo of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and its allies.   Earlier,...

Kolkata : Tata Motors Limited today told the Calcutta High Court that after the relocation of the Nano plant, the company had been interested in using the land for alternative investment and, therefore, could not be accused of abandoning the area. The automobile manufacturer — which has challenged the Singur Land Development and Rehabilitation Act, 2011 — also discussed the issue with the then Left Front government, Tata Motors counsel Samaraditya...

New Delhi : The government finds it “highly objectionable” that the Supreme Court included the Director, Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), in a Special Investigation Team set up to investigate black money cases. “What is of serious concern and highly objectionable is the inclusion of the Director, Research and Analysis Wing, in the SIT,” said the government in an application filed in the Supreme Court seeking the recall and modification of...

The communal violence bill prepared by the National Advisory Council (NAC) seeks fundamentally to change how the government deals with violence against minorities. The bill focuses on religious and linguistic minorities as well the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but religious minorities are at its heart. The bill has some undeniable strengths, but it suffers from two analytically fatal flaws. First, it places excessive faith in the state machinery. Though...

-The Telegraph   The Supreme Court has criticised those who raise “the bogey of judicial activism or overreach” every time the courts try to enforce welfare laws. A two-judge bench said the courts do not exceed their jurisdiction by hearing public interest litigations filed by NGOs and social activists on behalf of the poor and illiterate. Rather, by doing so, the courts fulfil a mandate laid down in the Constitution’s chapter on...