-The Times of India BOLPUR/NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister's office on Monday took serious note of an incident where a Class-V student of Visva-Bharati's Patha Bhavan school was forced to lick her urine as punishment for bedwetting. The PM is the university's chancellor and his office has asked for a report. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights too has slapped a notice on the state government asking for a...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today took cognisance of a public interest petition about alleged extra-judicial killings of unarmed nationals by the Border Security Force along the Bengal stretch of the border with Bangladesh. A two-judge bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Mishra issued notices to the Centre and the Bengal government after hearing short arguments from senior counsel Colin Gonsalves for the Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha, an NGO that filed...

-The Telegraph The Centre has brought back quarterly monitoring of the performances of all ministries and projects after having let the practice lapse into half-yearly reviews about five years ago. Projects and ministries will be set targets and these will be reviewed at three levels — by the PMO, Planning Commission and administrative ministries — plan panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said today. “We have set quarterly targets for all the ministries...

-The Times of India Seventeen months after it registered a FIR (first information report) in the Adarsh society scam, the CBI on Wednesday filed a chargesheet against 13 politicians, bureaucrats and retired military officers. The case involving the 31-storeyed tower in tony Colaba had led to a chief minister stepping down and seven high-profile personalities, including a former BMC chief and retired military officers, getting arrested.  The charges filed were for criminal...

Regulations covering public health should override personal rights and the country cannot wait any more for a good public health law. The health care industry, including institutions of medical education, hospitals and pharmaceutical businesses, have grown into behemoths that can do considerable harm in the absence of independent and effective regulatory systems. While there are no success stories in the regulation of any kind of industry in India, I will focus...