The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the disclosure, under the Right to Information Act, of answer sheets of students of any examination conducted by any agency in India. A Bench of Justices R.V. Raveendran and A.K. Patnaik gave this ruling, upholding a Calcutta High Court order permitting students to inspect and photocopy their answer sheets in any educational or professional examination. The Bench held that evaluated scripts would come under the...

The Centre today took the extraordinary step of advising media to be “responsible” and not to “demonise” a different point of view, reflecting an assessment that the prevailing sense of drift was severely affecting legislative and administrative processes. Three senior cabinet ministers — Salman Khurshid (law), Kapil Sibal (telecom) and Ambika Soni (information and broadcasting) — appealed to the media to put things in perspective instead of sensationalising every issue without...

After a four-decade battle, Indian lawmakers took the first formal step toward creating an independent anticorruption agency on Thursday, introducing a bill in Parliament that would appoint a powerful ombudsman, or Lokpal, to investigate wrongdoing by government officials. But the draft of the law, which exempts the prime minister, members of Parliament and many other officials from the Lokpal’s jurisdiction, was roundly rejected by many of the people who had...

After the brutal murder of Azad, is there any hope for well-meaning routine calls for “dialogue” and “peace talks”? What can the "civil society" do as a serious, real intervention? It is reported that the decades-old talks with Naga insurgent groups has made some progress recently (See “Differences ‘narrowed’,” Times of India, July 19, 2011). One reason why talks have a chance in these cases is that separatism comes in...

This essay describes and compares Parliament and the Supreme Court and examines the relationship between them. Parliament may still be a great institution, but its members are no longer great men. How long can a great institution remain great in the hands of small men? The SC has held its place in the public esteem rather better than the Lok Sabha, despite the occasional allegation of financial impropriety. Parliament, the...