In a bid to win the hearts of forest-based communities, the government will decriminalise the collection of traditional 'livelihood items' from the forests. The move comes even as a joint committee set up by the environment and tribal affairs ministries found several state governments guilty of using the three-year-old Forest Rights Act to distribute forest land to individuals. The committee, headed by Naresh Saxena, development expert and former secretary to the government...

Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh announced on Monday that the government would amend the colonial period legislation – Indian Forest Act, 1927 – to curtail the powers given to forest department to foist criminal cases against tribals. "We are bringing about Amendments to the Indian Forest Act in order to ensure that these large number of cases are not foisted on tribal communities people who are going into forests daily...

The sentencing of Dr. Binayak Sen involves unverified charges, and unreasonable and unconstitutional findings. The constitutional validity of the charges of sedition and conspiracy that were used to implicate rights activists such as Binayak Sen merely for their anti-establishment political thoughts needs to be challenged. The action ridicules the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. The sections of the Indian Penal Code that deal with “conspiracy to wage war against the government”...

“Take again Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code. Now so far as I am concerned that particular section is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place both for practical and historical reasons, if you like, in anv body of laws that we might pass. The sooner we get rid of it the better.” —Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in Parliament during debates on the first Amendment to...

A maid hired from a tribal zone without the panchayat’s sanction could bring a legal case of human trafficking if Amendments planned to a poorly enforced law are carried through. The changes are proposed in the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (Pesa), which aims to give tribal communities in 94 districts greater powers over land and resources. The zones are in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand,...