In violation of Supreme Court directions, 28 persons are being kept in solitary confinement in various jails all over the country. Information under Right to Information (RTI) Act obtained by Navkiran Singh, a lawyer practising in Punjab and Haryana High Court, reveals that West Bengal has the maximum number of prisoners kept ‘illegally’ in solitary confinement. While West Bengal has 16 such prisoners, Rajasthan and Jharkhand have three each. As per...

‘The least that every worker in field and factory is entitled to is a minimum wage which will enable him to live in modest comfort, and humane hours of labour which do not break his strength or spirit...,’ Jawaharlal Nehru declared stirringly in his presidential address to Congress in Lahore in 1929. Eight decades later, the Union government of free India resolved that it would not pay the minimum wage...

Besieged as it is by a spate of scams, the Centre has revived the 40-year-old proposal of setting up a national ombudsman called the Lokpal to probe political corruption. But, far from overcoming the existing deficiencies, the latest draft Bill – which could be promulgated any time soon as an ordinance - provides a legal veneer to them so that crooked politicians will continue to enjoy almost as much impunity...

Farmer agitation over compensation for land returned to haunt the Mayawati government when about a dozen persons, including three policemen, were injured in a clash in Karchhana in Allahabad district on Friday. The farmers of Dewri Kachri village staged an indefinite dharna demanding more compensation for the land acquired for a power project being developed by the JP Group in Karchhana. Reports said that one person was killed in police firing....

One farmer was killed and several others, including some policemen, were injured on Friday when protesting farmers clashed with the police in Allahabad district. The farmers were holding a protest demanding enhanced compensation for their land which has been acquired by the government for building a 1320 MW power plant at Karchana. Enraged over the death, hundreds of farmers indulged in stone throwing and set ablaze several police vehicles and squatted on...