-Economic and Political Weekly   A "high-level" committee makes half-baked recommendations which will rollback the PDS. A ccording to media reports, former Union Minister for Food Shanta Kumar recently disowned the National Food Security Act (NFSA) on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He explained, without blinking, that the BJP had just pretended to support the Act when it was being discussed in Parliament, for fear of the possible electoral consequences of...

-The Telegraph Jaipur: At least two sitting women village heads in Rajasthan would have to watch from the sidelines when rural polls get under way tomorrow after the high court today refused to stay an ordinance that has fixed minimum educational qualifications for contestants. A bench of Chief Justice Sunil Ambawani and Justice Prakash Gupta said courts couldn't interfere once the notification had been issued and the election process set in motion. The...

-The Indian Express It was an interesting discussion. The subject was the recent ordinance promulgated by the government of Rajasthan banning men and women without a Class X certificate from contesting zila parishad and panchayat samiti elections. To contest at the sarpanch level, a candidate will need to have passed Class VIII (Class V in tribal areas). In this state, with a particularly poor record of literacy among women, tribals and...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre today said it was "considering" two new penal code provisions to punish racial discrimination and racial insults, recommended by a panel as a safeguard for people from the Northeast living elsewhere in the country. Home minister Rajnath Singh announced a slew of other measures too for migrants from the region while signalling acceptance of the M.P. Bezbaruah committee's recommendations. Officials clarified that the proposed Sections 153C...

-The Indian Express Under Opposition fire for promulgating three ordinances less than 24 hours after both houses of Parliament were prorogued, the Centre is planning to take the ordinance route once more to effect crucial changes to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. Sources in the Prime Minister's Office told The Indian Express that with Assembly elections in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir...