-The Hindustan Times   A month after the Centre approved CBI’s request to exempt it from the purview of the Right to Information Act, the Delhi High Court is set to examine its validity. Sitab Ali Chaudhary, a lawyer, has filed a PIL, making the Centre, the home and law ministries, CBI and National Investigating Agency answerable to the petition. A bench headed by chief justice Dipak Misra will hear the PIL on...

The Right to Education Act, which lacks a transformational vision, is geared to preparing foot soldiers for the global market. THE most encouraging and delightful news regarding school education in India since the pro-market reforms began in 1991 came from Erode district in Tamil Nadu recently. To be sure, it is neither about the World Bank-sponsored District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) of the 1990s nor about the internationally funded and...

-The Deccan Herald   "CBI can’t be equated with other agencies." The Union cabinet’s recent decision to exclude the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act is wrong and, as widely suspected, ill-motivated. The CBI has been trying to secure such an exemption for long for wrong reasons. The cabinet has acted according to the wishes of the investigative agency and notified its decision. The...

-The Times of India   The Madras High Court has directed the Tamil Nadu school education department to finalise and publish the rules for the Right to Education Act within six weeks. The first bench comprising Chief Justice M Y Eqbal and Justice T S Sivagnanam delivering its order on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by advocate S Sathia Chandran, who said that though the act has laudable provisions, it could...

One of the most shameful pieces of legislation in our penal code is the continuance of ‘Sedition’ in Section 124A of the Penal Code which provides that whoever excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law in India shall be punished with imprison-ment for life. The expression disaffection includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity. This provision was included by the British Government in 1870 as...