Mirchpur Dalit naib tehsildar can't be prosecuted due to his caste Drawing upon a couple of instances in the Mirchpur caste violence trial in which the Judge was constrained by two sub-sections of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, to sentence three convicted Jat men to life imprisonment offering no judicial discretion for a lighter sentence, and the neglect of duties by a Dalit naib tehsildar of Mirchpur...

Kashmir, which India considers as the core of its unity in diversity, is turning out to be the Great Divider of the activists. Medha Patkar, one of the flag-bearers of the activist armada in the country, today termed Kashmir an integral part of India, leaving a section of her supporters embarrassed and fuming. Patkar, who is also associated with Team Anna whose key member Prashant Bhushan was last week roughed up for...

-The Hindu   The former Director-General of Police of Gujarat, Julio Francis Ribeiro, on Thursday condemned the arrest of suspended Gujarat cadre IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who took on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his alleged role in the 2002 post-Godhra riots. “I condemn the action of the Modi government arresting him and doing something unconscionable which is not within the limits of morality,” Mr. Ribeiro told a press conference organised by...

Is the Congress afraid of winning in Gujarat?  Nothing else explains why it lets Narendra Modi tom-tom development when it should have been the Congress banging the drums. The economic achievements of governments before Modi's read like an award citation, but too much Secularism has since led the Congress astray. Instead of showcasing its past performance to regain Gujarat, it is obsessed with nailing Modi as a communalist-in-chief. Naturally, it is...

Any new system for the socio-economic progress of Dalits and other vulnerable sections must not lose sight of Special Component Plan goals. THE Planning Commission's “Approach to the 12th Five Year Plan” deals with the Scheduled Castes (S.C.s) briefly in a portion of Chapter 11 titled “Social and Regional Equity”. It, however, significantly mentions the need to devise a new system that can overcome the difficulties experienced with regard to the...