All schools, barring unaided minority institutions, will have to set aside 25 per cent of their seats for disadvantaged sections in the neighbourhood, the Supreme Court ruled today. The top court settled the question by upholding the relevant clause in the right to education law, saying that “advancement of education is a recognised head of charity” and rejecting a slew of petitions filed by several unaided schools. Since the act deals with...

-The Hoot The West Bengal Chief Minister has made it clear that any public voice of Dissent would be curbed by whatever means required. “If required, I will tell the people which newspapers to read in future”: this gem of an announcement was made by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in an interview given to selected news channels recently. Giving interviews to a chosen few, especially those who would not dare...

-The Times of India As political parties learn to set up central war-rooms in their headquarters during elections to civic bodies, state assemblies or the Lok Sabha, they are increasingly depending on private detective agencies to collect and collate data in order to gauge people's mood, select prospective candidates and know rival strategies. Sniffing a business opportunity, private players have come up with specialised services of providing ground report to political leaders....

Do dollars dictate Dissent? Are agendas altered as advised? Government statements related to these questions - specifically, the foreign funding of non-government organisations (NGOs) involved in the protests against nuclear power at Kudankulam - generated much discussion.  The uproar is over, and Kudankulam will soon be operational. However, many wider issues remain, and these merit consideration. Among these, two significant ones are the role of NGOs - or, more specifically, civil...

RTI activists in Haryana have decided to protest against the appointment of bureaucrats as state information commissioners (SIC) directly after their superannuation "without transparency". They have also planned to move the Punjab and Haryana high court against the appointment of outgoing chief secretary, Urvashi Gulati as the SIC. Urvashi Gulati's husband Naresh Gulati is chief state information commissioner while her elder sister, Meenaxi Anand Chaudhry had also been state information...