-The Hindu Given industry concerns and the desire to accelerate industrialisation, the government could have reopened the debate on the land act. Instead, it has wholly accepted one perception of the conflict, and sought to undo the compromise embodied in the 2013 Act without a review This article will not go into the question of the propriety of the ordinance route to legislation in this case, but will try to present a...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday accused the Modi government of surreptitiously restoring a century-old British law on land acquisition even as the party brainstormed on "weakening" of UPA's "aam aadmi" policies, firmly adopting a left-of-centre approach to take on BJP. Congress appears set to launch an agitation against the NDA government's policies of coal mine auctions, liberalized land acquisition, Forest Rights Act and a restructured...

-The Hindu In India, the right to vote is only a statutory right, but the act of voting is a constitutionally protected ‘freedom of expression' under Article 19, as a fundamental right (PUCL, 2013). The Supreme Court recently refused to hear a petition challenging the Rajasthan Panchayati Raj (Second Amendment) ordinance, 2014 on procedural grounds, sending it back to the High Court. The controversial ordinance introduces a set of educational qualifications of...

-The Hindu The recent ordinance amending the Land Acquisition Act has exempted several categories of projects from the requirements of owners' consent and social impact assessment before acquiring land. Officials, however, say norms are yet to be worked out to ensure that only the bare minimum of the land required is acquired. The Act excluded private hospitals, educational institutions and hotels from the category of infrastructure projects. Under the ordinance, public-private projects...

-Frontline SHUBHANKAR DAM, Assistant Professor of Law at Singapore Management University School of Law, is the author of Presidential Legislation in India: The Law and Practice of ordinances (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which has received wide acclaim among scholars of constitutional law. Against the backdrop of his insightful critique on the necessity of ordinances in a democracy, Professor Dam discusses in this interview the recent controversy triggered by the Bharatiya Janata...