-The Hindu But don’t lose sight of judicial independence, he tells govt Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia, while making it clear that the judiciary was not afraid of laws to make judges accountable, cautioned the government not to tinker with its independence. “I would request the government that accountability be balanced with judicial independence.” In enacting laws, the concept of judicial independence should not be lost sight of. For, “decisional independence and...

-The Hindu An ideological conflict over the fundamentals of the revolutionary movement has led to a minor split in the Odisha unit of the CPI (Maoist), after the party think-tank expelled senor leader Sabyasachi Panda. Panda, who has now formed the Odisha Maowadi Party (OMP), has questioned the very path of protracted people’s war by the Maoists to achieve the new democratic revolution. In letters addressed to Maoist chief Ganapathy and other...

-Deccan Herald First conviction in Rajasthan for MGNREGS anomalies In the first ever conviction in the state for fudging MGNREGA works, a lower court in Beawar in Ajmer has sentenced four persons to seven years in jail with a fine of Rs 50,000 each and two others for three years with a fine of Rs 10,000 each.  These persons were accused of anomalies of about Rs 1.41 crore in the operation of Mahatma Gandhi...

-The Hindu SaTurday’s violence by Muslim youth has shaken Mumbai. This is probably the first time that policemen have borne the brunt of the violence — of the 63 injured, 58 are policemen. What kind of mob has the guts to attack the police and think it can get away with it? A Muslim social worker has filed a complaint with the police against the organisers for instigating the public; a...

-The Business Standard No movement yet on quality control in higher education The state of professional higher education in India is abysmal. Consider engineering. All told, there are 1.5 million engineering seats in the country. Almost a third of these are unfilled, so about a million engineers are produced every year. Yet, barely 10 per cent of them are readily employable. About a quarter don’t know enough English to make sense...