-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In what is being seen as an attempt to delay launch of low priced generic medicines, multinational drug makers have asked the government to create a registry providing information about all drug applications pending manufacturing and marketing approval. The proposal, if accepted by the government, will help ‘big pharma’ pre-emptively challenge generic drug makers in court for allegedly infringing upon their patents and in turn blocking...

-The Economic Times The group said the threat posed by digital platforms to the integrity of the upcoming elections has assumed “alarming proportions”. A group of rights organisations and citizens — including Internet Freedom Foundation, Common Cause and former chief election commissioners N Gopalaswami and SY Quraishi — have “made an urgent appeal” to the Election Commission to rein in digital platforms to ensure integrity of the general elections. The group, which also...

-IANS New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) should treat social media like any other media and all rules that apply to the media during the model code of conduct should also apply to social media, former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi said on Friday. Quraishi was speaking at an event where a group of former bureaucrats and organisations, like Common Cause, Free Internet Foundation, Association for Democratic Reforms and Free Software Movement...

-PTI The Election Commission of India on Friday expressed “displeasure” over NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar’s remarks against the Congress’ proposed minimum income scheme ‘NYAY’ and said the comments violated the model code of conduct norms. In a communication sent to Mr. Kumar, the EC asked him to be cautious in future while making statements. The EC asserted that the public servants should not only be impartial in their conduct but also in...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said on Thursday that the tax base and revenues had increased significantly post demonetisation and there was no surge in the people who stopped filing returns. “CBDT clarified that contrary to the report, it is a fact that demonetization had a phenomenal positive impact on the widening of tax base and direct tax collections,” the tax department said while...