-PTI Ensure that findings of the probe are kept in a sealed cover The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Election Commission to proceed with its probe into the authenticity of the former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan's spendings during the 2009 State Assembly elections, allegedly involving expenses on “paid news.” A Bench of Justices Altamas Kabir and J. Chelameshwar, however, asked the Commission's counsel Meenakshi Arora to ensure that findings of the...

Remote controls are identified as technical devices which are used for various purposes ranging from the launching of space-ships to the monitoring of toy cars. But of late, these devices are being used to direct policies for nation states which are formally sovereign. We speak here of the powerful lobby of international credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor's (S&P), which has just delivered its sermon that India is no longer...

Recent debates on Internet censorship in India have focused to the allegedly free-for-all nature of the internet. Those of us who have argued against internet censorship have been somewhat misrepresented as arguing for absolute freedom whereby the reasonable restrictions laid down in Article 19 (A) of the Constitution of India don’t apply. Nothing could be farther than the truth. It has been said that the internet can be used to incite...

Online cards issued under the government's flagship rural jobs scheme will now include the beneficiary's 12-digit 'Aadhar' number issued under the Centre's multi-crore unique ID project that has drawn more brickbats than bouquets.  Over the next three months, state governments will update the registration data, including Aadhar numbers, of beneficiaries under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in an exercise to weed out ghost cards.  "This will help us assess...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court's ruling on the requirement of previous sanction to prosecute soldiers accused of committing crimes may have clarified matters as far as the legal provisions of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act are concerned but for the families of the five innocent men who were killed in a fake encounter at Pathribal, Jammu and Kashmir, in March 2000, it is still not clear whether or not they...