India's Supreme Court has told states to "ruthlessly stamp out" the so-called honour killings. The court also warned that senior officials who failed to act against the offenders would be prosecuted. In recent times, there have been many cases where people have been ostracised or killed for defying age-old notions of tradition and family honour. Often these crimes are endorsed, or even encouraged, by village-based caste councils. Many of the victims are young couples...

Barring stray incidents, voting is peaceful during the first phase of the Bihar Panchayat polls being held amidst tight security today. Polling is being held at 12,905 booths spread over 37 districts for 28,639 posts of village chiefs, sarpanchs, gram Panchayat members, gram kutchery panch, Panchayat samiti members and district board members. There are 1.43 lakh candidates in the fray. People queued up at polling booths despite a boycott call by Maoists....

Casteism is one of the main causes holding up the country's progress Calling a person by caste name, if used with intent to insult, is an offence under SC/ST Act Society regarding a section of its own countrymen as inferior is simply unacceptable While deprecating the caste system in the country, the Supreme Court has declared illegal ‘khap Panchayats' which often decree or encourage honour killings or other institutionalised atrocities against boys and...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday termed Khap Panchayats as kangaroo courts and declared them illegal. The Supreme Court ruling said that Khap Panchayats are wholly illegal and have to be ruthlessly stamped out. A bench of justices Markandeya Katju and Gyan Sudha Mishra said in a judgement that the new trends of kangaroo courts, honour killings, "khap" Panchayaths in northern India and "katta" Panchayats in Tamil Nadu were barbaric and illegal,...

In a bid to weed out frauds, the government has decided that all its employees should have the Aadhar Unique Identification Number (UID) to draw their salary. Maharashtra will be the first state in the country to implement the system. The UID will have demographic and biometric information of an individual. The government, which has nearly 37 lakh staffers, hopes that the system will stop corruption among unscrupulous employees, who have...