-The Hindu   With a view to laying down guidelines for disposal of mercy petitions, the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Centre to file a comprehensive affidavit giving details of all mercy petitions filed by death row convicts pending before the President of India and the Governors of various States. A Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadhaya, while granting four weeks to the Additional Solicitor-General Harin Raval for filing the...

The Citizens' Right to Grievance Redress Bill, 2011, marks the next milestone in the UPA's mission to enact a series of rights-based legislation. Drawing on the framework of the Right to Information Act, the Bill seeks to ensure that the common man receives efficient delivery of goods and services that he is entitled to - which may have been delayed. The Bill will empower citizens to take action against the...

Till a few years ago, the final arbiter of what is and is not permissible programming was the Union information & broadcasting ministry. In this scrupulous act of discernment, it was aided by the central monitoring services: college students would be appointed as monitors to watch television programmes and listen to radio shows round the clock and report to the ministry. Any channel or radio show that transgressed the programme...

The 17 major emitters are making a last ditch attempt to resolve the impasse over the fate of the Kyoto Protocol and the shape of a future global legal deal to tackle climate change. With a fortnight to the UN-sponsored climate meet at Durban, the Major Economies Forum is meeting in New York this week to hammer out a working compromise.  In the past, the US State Department-sponsored Major Economies Forum...

Wajahat Habibullah, chairperson, National Commission for Minorities, speaks to Kavita Chowdhury on reservation for Muslims, the RTI Act and the controversy over withdrawal of AFSPA in Kashmir. You had recently visited Rajasthan. In Bharatpur district’s Gopalgarh village, some members of the minority community, Mev Muslims, were killed and the state administration was accused of mishandling the matter. What is your view? A communal riot is an unpardonable crime. The state government has taken...