-Tehelka Justice Sujata Manohar on how the Biotechnology Bill is fundamentally flawed IN THE last few years, regulatory systems across the board have been undergoing an overhaul to fit the needs of a new era. Likewise, new laws are being chalked out to meet new needs, and several are receiving flak owing to the loopholes and regressive grounds on which these have been drafted. The relatively more recent one to regulate modern...

-The Hindustan Times Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi may have got a clean chit from the Supreme Court-appointed SIT in the Gulbarg Society massacre case, but may still run into trouble over a phone log CD, which reveals the number of calls exchanged by the accused with the top authorities, including calls received by the chief minister's office (CMO), during the 2002 riots. In a fresh development, the SIT has now...

Any move by the government to dump the public distribution system for supply of food items to the poor is likely to face a tough challenge from various NGOs, which are planning to move the Supreme Court seeking its intervention in the matter. Armed with a survey report in by NGO, Lok Shakti Manch in various slum clusters in Delhi on whether PDS should be substituted with transfer of cash to...

-IANS The government wants to plug leakages in the public distribution system (PDS) before it implements the ambitious National Food Security Bill and has asked states to complete the process of computerisation of data on beneficiaries by October this year. The proposed law, a pet project of United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi, aims to give legal right to cheaper foodgrain to 63.5 per cent of the population. According to a senior official...

-The Times of India MARGAO: Claiming that there were allegations that 50 % of the central government funds meant for the Public Distribution System (PDS) were being diverted for black marketeering, Justice D P Wadhwa, former judge of the Supreme Court of India and Chairman of the Central Vigilance Committee on PDS, encouraged PDS dealers to open grocery shops as well to help them augment their income While addressing a public hearing...