The Supreme Court today refused to direct the Nanavati Commission to summon and question Narendra Modi about his alleged role in the 2002 riots, saying that doing so would amount to “judicial overreach”. The court’s decision followed an embarrassing gaffe it had made in the case a week ago, and would come as a relief to the Gujarat chief minister. Ironically enough, the two-judge bench had sought to issue notices on the...

Travelling in rural India always yields rich insights into how poor women struggle to provide that little extra, in terms of food, for the family meal. It was in the village of Vijaypura – in the drought prone Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh – that I came across Bharati, a 39-year-old farm woman and homemaker, working her everyday magic by laying out slices of potato and whole green chillies on the...

It will not work at cross purposes with the Abhijit Sen committee: Ashwani Kumar In a bid to address the rising concerns, within and outside Parliament, over the latest poverty estimates released by the Planning Commission, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday declared that a technical group would be put in place to come up a new methodology to capture the incidence of poverty. Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a...

Unlike in some countries as the US, the judges of the Supreme Court of India sit in some 13 Benches and deliver judgments. Each judgment is taken as that of the court. One Bench might take a harsh view on a subject while another may be lenient. This was evident from two judgments delivered by two different Benches on the simmering issue of the “first-come, first-served” (FCFS) policy. One dealt with...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today issued notices to the Nanavati Commission and the Gujarat government directing the panel to summon chief minister Narendra Modi for questioning in connection with the 2002 riots. The order came on a petition filed by Jan Sangharsh Manch (JSM), which represents the riot victims. Gujarat High Court had earlier rejected the plea by JSM The JSM then appealed in the apex court following which a bench of...