-Hindustan Times Aligarh: “She is a very Iron lady,” says Krishna, a municipal stenographer as I wait to meet the mayor of Aligarh, the BJP’s Shakuntala Bharti on a sultry afternoon. After over an hour, clad in a bright red sari with a thick golden border, vermillion streak on forehead and sindoor all the way back in her hair, Bharti, 51, walks in with a small black pug called Blackie. Amongst the FIRst...

-The Times of India AGRA: From transporting meat only in insulated freezer vans to health certificates for all workers, from forbidding meat shops near religious places and vegetable markets to strict FSDA compliance, the UP government has sent out an elaborate list of dos and don'ts for meat shop owners. The list of necessary infrastructure is so exhaustive, said meat shop owners, that most retailers will have to down shutters permanently. However,...

-The Hindu Business Line From a severely critical stand against Aadhaar in 2014, the Modi-led BJP in power has made a sharp U-turn to bulldoze its way into having every Indian scanned, tagged and labelled. A timeline of the country’s chequered date with the unique identification project You’ve probably read the WhatsApp joke about a post-Aadhaar scenario in 2020 India. A man orders pizza over phone. He is asked for his Aadhaar...

-The Hindu New Bill makes it an offence punishable with life imprisonment, bigger fine. AHMEDABAD: If the newly elected BJP government in Uttar Pradesh launched a crackdown on illegal slaughter houses immediately after the Assembly polls, another BJP-ruled State, Gujarat, which goes to the polls later this year, came up with an amendment to make cow slaughter an offence punishable with life term, a FIRst in the country. The most stringent provision in...

-The Indian Express Supreme Court must urgently hear and settle issues of privacy and exclusion raised in the context of the UID project Coercion, illegality, contempt of court and exclusion have become characteristics by which people recognise the UID project. It started with its use in PDS and LPG, but, by now, has spread like a contagion to all manner of databases. In just the last 20 days, the government has...