-The Hindu   Top civil society bodies are challenging the government's ‘counter-affidavit' in the Paid News case which seeks to gut the Election Commission's powers In a major twist to the Ashok Chavan vs. Madhav Kinhalkar legal battle (more notorious as the "Paid News" scandal), leading civil society organisations and eminent individuals have approached the Supreme Court to implead themselves into the case. Their intervention application, moved by advocate Prashant Bhushan, minces no words...

-PTI   The Supreme Court today set aside the Orissa High Court order which had quashed state government's petition to allot iron ore licence to South Korean steel major Posco in Khandadhar hills in Sundergarh district for a multi-crore steel plant. A bench headed by Justice R M Lodha asked the Centre to consider all the objections raised by various parties pertaining to the mega steel plant and take a decision. The court was...

-The Hindu Decision by Chavan comes after agitations by CPI(M), Kisan Sabha Mumbai: Responding to the agitations by the CPI(M) and the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), the Maharashtra government has agreed to re-examine around two-lakh rejected claims of land rights made under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. The re-evaluation will be first carried out in Thane and Nashik districts, which have the highest...

-The Indian Express Almost a month after the Supreme Court dismissed convicted Khalistani terrorist Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar's plea that his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, German President Joachim Gauck and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle have written to their Indian counterparts seeking clemency for Bhullar. Bhullar, who was convicted for the 1993 car bomb blast outside the Youth Congress office in the capital in which nine people were killed, was...

-The Economic Times The Supreme Court may have called upon the " caged parrot" Central Bureau of Investigation to free itself from the interference of the executive, but the dependence of the agency on its several masters in the government makes it easier said than done. The ministries of home, personnel, law and finance can all be construed as the masters of CBI in one way or the other, given the decisive...