-The Hindu When a death sentence is given to satisfy the "collective conscience of the community," it raises troubling questions about the fairness of the trial The verdict of death for the bestial gang rape in Delhi last December is based on Supreme Court judgments, which stipulate that capital punishment will be imposed in "the rarest of rare" cases, where the community's "collective conscience is so shocked that it will expect the...

-The Hindu Most of the acquisitions by the Central government and public sector companies in the country's resource-rich State are under laws that bypass the new land Bill The UPA has claimed the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Bill 2013 passed by both Houses will reduce forcible acquisition and help tackle Naxalism in mineral-rich areas. But with Coal Bearing Areas Acquisition and Development (CBA)...

-The Hindu The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) will examine whether developmental interventions and constitutional safeguards - including Fifth Schedule provisions - have come to the aid of tribal people in Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected districts in central India. An NAC Working Group (WG) headed by tribal expert Professor Virginius Xaxa - who also heads the Prime Minister's high level committee that is to produce a report on the...

Research by the Asian Centre for Human Rights, released on 18 September 2013, provides renewed evidence of marginalisation of Scheduled Tribes (STs) or adivasis in government employment, and in fact suggests that such exclusion is growing in some areas despite policies of reservation. (The entire report can be accessed here). Until May 2013, the number of backlog adivasi vacancies with the Central Government was 12,195 posts. Breaking up these figures...

-The Hindu ‘We had to walk 40 to 50 km., in flood, to collect foodgrains' Raipur: While the Chhattisgarh government is touting its food policy as the most successful model of production and distribution of food grains in the country, the people of Abujhmarh - a vast swath of forestland in south-west Chhattisgarh - spent another monsoon without adequate food. Several villagers told The Hindu that the fair price shops, run by Gram...