Wajahat Habibullah, chairperson, National Commission for Minorities, speaks to Kavita Chowdhury on reservation for Muslims, the RTI Act and the controversy over withdrawal of AFSPA in Kashmir. You had recently visited Rajasthan. In Bharatpur district’s Gopalgarh village, some members of the minority community, Mev Muslims, were killed and the state administration was accused of mishandling the matter. What is your view? A communal riot is an unpardonable crime. The state government has taken...

Many people including members of Team Anna have expressed reservations about the way in which their campaign has been developing, and some have even resigned. This raises questions about the real aim of the leadership around Anna. Is it really what it is proclaimed to be? Is the aim to get the Jan Lokpal Bill passed by parliament? Team Anna has repeatedly stated that they have just a one-point agenda: to get...

-The Hindu   In a historic first, a special court in Gujarat has convicted and awarded life sentences to as many as 31 mostly high caste, landed Patels for burning alive 33 Muslims — the majority of them women and children — of Sardarpura village in Mehsana district. The village was among numerous Muslim habitations targeted across the State by irate Hindu mobs as part of a pogrom ruthlessly executed in the...

Mirchpur Dalit naib tehsildar can't be prosecuted due to his caste Drawing upon a couple of instances in the Mirchpur Caste Violence trial in which the Judge was constrained by two sub-sections of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, to sentence three convicted Jat men to life imprisonment offering no judicial discretion for a lighter sentence, and the neglect of duties by a Dalit naib tehsildar of Mirchpur...

No doubt ,India is making progress by leaps and bounds in every sector but the condition of the Dalits in India is deteriorating day by day in the society .Development of any nation has no meaning when a particular section of the society such as the downtrodden are socially & economically segregated from the mainstream . The situation is critical when we measure the overall development of the country in...