-India Today Jaipur: Rajasthan High Court has banned holding of any government functions during the BJP-sponsored Suraj Gaurav Yatra undertaken by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. A PIL had challenged the government expenditure on the yatra because it was a party show. The PIL cited a few instances where government departments had invited tenders and deputed officials for the yatra. The BJP had submitted bills of the expenditure it has been incurring on the...

-National Herald The police acted in gross violation of the law, killing 13 people; the judiciary failed the people and the media spread canards      The targeted shooting of peaceful demonstrators in Thoothukudi (also known as Tuticorin), which resulted in the Tamil Nadu Police killing 13 people in cold blood, and injuring scores of others, and the subsequent brutal crackdown on civilians, points to a sinister collusion between the owners of Sterlite...

-The Hindu Takes suo motu cognisance of article in The Hindu, makes it part of case records Chennai (Tamil Nadu): The Madras High Court on Friday took suo motu cognisance of a news article titled ‘India’s Missing Children’ that appeared in the Sunday Magazine section of The Hindu on August 12 and made it a part of the official records of a batch of cases being heard by the court in connection...

-The Hindu They matter because they sustain social practices without which human life is neither worthwhile nor indeed possible There is much talk these days about the decline in our institutions. Aren’t they failing to perform, being systematically undermined, even destroyed? On the one hand, people are heard lamenting that our courts are compromised, that our Parliament is dysfunctional, or that our higher education is in a mess. On the other hand,...

-TheWire.in There have been no efforts to regularly compile and publish data on the social, economic and professional backgrounds of judges in either the higher or lower judiciary. The appointment of Indu Malhotra to the Supreme Court has rekindled the debate surrounding the ‘representativeness’ of the judiciary. She is only the seventh woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court in the seven decades of its existence, and the first woman...