-The Indian Express Chandigarh: Slamming the Punjab government for sponsoring "xenophobia", the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday set aside its "discriminatory" rules, wherein it had allowed additional weightage to rural students for government jobs. A Full Bench comprising Justices Hemant Gupta, Ajay Tewari and R N Raina held the rules framed by Punjab as "illegal, unconstitutional" and beyond its "legislative competence". "State sponsored xenophobia is constitutional anathema and the principle...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court has held that criminal cases, particularly corruption-related, cannot be quashed because of prolonged delay in trial. The recent ruling assumes significance against the backdrop of a pile-up in cases and a perception fuelled by time lag that those charged with corruption usually get away lightly. The Supreme Court's decision came while it refused to quash a 27-year-old graft case filed by the anti-corruption bureau against the then deputy...

-The Indian Express Less than a year after it ratified the legal status of the Right To Education (RTE) Act, the Supreme Court has held it "appropriate" for a constitution bench to test yet again the constitutional validity of the social welfare legislation enacted with Constitutional amendments. A Bench, led by Justice K S Radhakrishnan, last week ordered for placing a petition moved by a bunch of Karnataka-based institutions before the Chief...

-The Hindustan Times The Centre and the CBI faced off before the Supreme Court over the coal scam on Tuesday, with the investigating agency pointing out flaws in the coal block allocation process. To ensure there is no political interference, the court asked the investigating agency not to share its probe report with the government. This is the first time the Central Bureau of Investigation has pointed out irregularities in coal block...

-The Hindu By hanging Afzal Guru secretly so that he could not approach the courts, and ignoring the pending case that could have affected his sentence, the Home Minister acted illegally On March 6, 2013, in response to an RTI request, the President’s Secretariat made available documents pertaining to Ajmal Kasab’s mercy petition. People from across the country and the globe had written to the President asking that he use his clemency...