-The Hindu "Why this selective concern about encounter killings in Gujarat - these happen all over the country," pleaded Gujarat's lawyer at a Supreme Court hearing of veteran journalist B.G. Verghese's public interest petition on 22 unexplained police killings in that state. When a 13-year-old boy was abducted from a Delhi jhuggi by Gujarat police officials on a whim, the State government's defence was first that the boy was Bangladeshi, next that...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre is all set to legally lock horns with the Supreme Court by questioning the court's powers to call for judicial scrutiny the President's exercise of constitutional power to grant pardon or commute sentences of condemned prisoners. "The decision of the President under Article 72 of the Constitution, either accepting or rejecting a petition, is a sovereign act. This sovereign act is performed after the...

-The Hindu Extraordinarily, more than a dozen senior police officers in Gujarat are in jail or facing prosecution, in connection with cold-blooded murders dressed up as encounter deaths. Darshan Desai traces the hand of politics in the extrajudicial killings. At a recent function in the state capital, Gandhinagar, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi warned the Central Bureau of Investigation against becoming a tool in the hands of the Congress-led union government. He...

-The Times of India ALLAHABAD: Taking a serious note of indiscriminate encroachment of ponds in the state, which is lowering the water table in the region, the Allahabad High Court has suggested that a special law should be enacted to protect and preserve the ponds, which are not only essential elements of village habitat but also valuable assets for the state. The court observed that a special procedure should be provided in...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Any promise of freebies such as television sets or laptops by political parties affects the level playing field and "shakes the root of free and fair elections", the Supreme Court has held. The court, however, clarified that such promises cannot be labelled "corrupt practice" under the existing laws and dismissed a petition challenging the competitive distribution of freebies by the AIADMK and the DMK during elections in Tamil...