-The Times of India LALGARH: After the State Election Commission, it was the judiciary's turn on Monday. Speaking at an election meeting in Lalgarh, chief minister Mamata Banerjee came down heavily on the judiciary for its "game plan" regarding the rural polls. "We were forced to submit before the game plan of the court and the State Election Commission to let the panchayat elections take place in the month of Ramzan as...

-NDTV The Election Commission will call for an all-party meeting to frame guidelines for election manifestos after the Supreme Court last week directed the poll panel to regulate content of the promises made by political parties. "Freebies promised by political parties in their election manifestos shake the roots of free and fair polls," the Supreme Court had said on Friday. In a statement, the Election Commission today said a "meeting of all recognized national and...

-NDTV A lawyer has challenged the contentious Food Security Ordinance in the Supreme Court, terming it as "illegal". The Centre's ambitious welfare programme is now a law after receiving President Pranab Mukherjee's assent on Friday; the scheme provides subsidised food to nearly 800 million or 67 per cent of the population and is being viewed as a major vote-getter in the national elections, due by May. Advocate ML Sharma today filed a...

-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...

-Kafila.org Over 115 women have signed a letter seeking an apology from Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi for her sexist slandering of deceased Ishrat Jahan in a television channel. The letter has also been sent to the Chairperson of the National Commission for Women for appropriate action. As the noose is tightening around the conspirators who cynically and coldly planned and executed the killing of teenaged Ishrat Jahan and three other people in 2004,...