-The Times of India NEW DELHI: There is some hope for the LGBT community in the recent Supreme Court judgment despite it spreading gloom among them by upholding the validity of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. While it closed the small window opened by the Delhi High Court legalizing consensual gay sex between adults in private, it took a panoramic view of Indian case law on Section 377 and...

-The Business Standard Lok Pal important measure, but more needed In what should be seen as a victory for deliberative democracy, the Lok Sabha passed the Lok Pal and Lok Ayuktas Bill, 2013, on Wednesday with near-unanimity among political parties. Only the Samajwadi Party and the Shiv Sena objected in the end, and they chose to walk out rather than vote against the Bill or disrupt the House. The Rajya Sabha had...

-The Indian Express By doing nothing, institutions foster hostile sexual environments. Once upon a time, facts amounting to sexual harassment did not socially "exist", let alone constitute a legal claim. Behaviour such as sexual innuendo, sexually offensive gestures, sexually explicit material, sexual expletives, hostile workplace environments, job-related decisions based on implied requests for sexual favours were, well, just the way things were - it was systemic in nature. These were common life...

-The Hindustan Times Greater Noida: An RTI activist was abducted from Dankaur town in Gautam Budh Nagar district on December 13, burnt with cigarette butts on his private parts and beaten with iron rods before being dumped near a petrol pump in a neighbouring district four days later. A medical report of the Dankaur government hospital notes Anoop Singh, 29, has 40 burn injuries all over his body, including on his face,...

-The Indian Express Asserting its supremacy over the executive, the Supreme Court Tuesday ruled that the Centre's approval was not required to investigate officers of Joint Secretary level and above when a constitutional court monitors the probe. In what it described as "substitution of a forum - from a minister to a constitutional court," a Bench led by Justice R M Lodha said the necessity of prior sanction under Section 6A of...