-The Times of India NEW delhi: The Centre accused the Supreme Court of encroaching into the legislative domain while diluting the stringent arrest provision of the SC/ST ( Prevention of Atrocities) Act and appealed on Thursday for its restoration. The written submission by attorney general K K Venugopal on behalf of the Centre reflected the executive’s seething anger rather than a dispassionate analysis of the March 20 judgment, which introduced anticipatory bail...

-The Hindu Farmers’ protests interrogate the reigning development model.   Alternatives do exist The recent spate of peasant protests across wide swathes of the country points sharply to the unjust folly and sheer unviability of the path of development that India has embraced, especially in the reform era since the late 1980s. Even, say, a modest food critic in metropolitan India collects an immodest annual pay package which can easily go into seven figures....

-NDTV (with inputs from IANS)   RTI responses on EVMs have highlighted irregularities in everything from the number of voting machines the Election Commission bought to the price it paid for them. New delhi: Responses to a series of Right to Information requests have thrown up multiple red flags in the Election Commission's acquisition and use of EVMs or Electronic Voting Machines. From huge inconsistencies in the records of the machines acquired...

-The Telegraph New delhi: The Union environment ministry has released new draft rules to replace proposals from last year that would have banned the sale of cattle for slaughter in animal markets and had stunned the livestock industry and prompted the Centre to rethink the move. The ministry on April 5 notified draft rules to supersede its May 2017 draft rules that would have required sellers and purchasers to declare that cattle...

-The Times of India NEW delhi: The Centre has finally scrapped its controversial notification on a ban on sale of animals for slaughter in livestock markets and come out with new draft rules doing away with the clause on “restrictions on sale of cattle”. This means cattle, including cows, can be sold in animal markets, even for slaughter wherever it is legal. Last year’s notification had not prohibited slaughter as such, but...