-The Indian Express Chandigarh: Slamming the Punjab government for sponsoring "xenophobia", the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday set aside its "discriminatory" rules, wherein it had allowed additional weightage to rural students for government jobs. A Full Bench comprising Justices Hemant Gupta, Ajay Tewari and R N Raina held the rules framed by Punjab as "illegal, unconstitutional" and beyond its "legislative competence". "State sponsored xenophobia is constitutional anathema and the principle...

-The Hindu "Animal behaviour," was the unusual language the Supreme Court deployed recently. The context for the cryptic remarks was the gruesome lathi-charge on protesting Teachers, predominantly women, engaged on contract by the Bihar government, and the attacks on a woman who sought police intervention in a case of assault. The police carry a long and ignominious record of resort to indiscriminate force to quell peaceful protesters, which peaked in the...

-The Hindu     The Opposition, including the Left Front, has demanded a thorough probe into the incident. Taking a serious view of the death of Students' Federation of India leader Sudipta Gupta in police custody, the West Bengal Human Rights Commission (WBHRC) directed the City Police Commissioner on Wednesday to probe the matter and submit a report within seven days. "The Commission has taken suo motu cognisance of the matter and directed the Commissioner...

-The Times of India A six-member CBI and income tax Team has begun examining over 5,800 tapes of recorded conversations of former corporate lobbyist Niira Radia with politicians, corporate honchos and others. The Team, headed by a deputy inspector general-rank officer, started going through the tapes and its transcripts running into 49 volumes last week as per the directions of the Supreme Court in February, sources said. An apex court bench comprising...

-The Indian Express A nationwide study by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to examine the enrolment, access and retention of children with disabilities (CWD) has revealed that while 99 per cent of these children liked attending regular schools, 57 per cent Teachers were not trained to understand their special needs. The study has found that special needs of children with mental illnesses were "neither being identified nor...