‘Unless media freedom to report court proceedings is protected, the right to know will be impaired”   Freedom of the press cannot be compromised with any other fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution, senior counsel Anil Divan argued in the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Continuing his submissions before a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia, counsel said the right conferred under Article 19 (1) (a) though not absolute...

A designated Special Investigation Team (SIT) court on Thursday pronounced the quantum of sentence in the Ode massacre case in which 23 people were found guilty of killing 23 Muslims in the Ode town of central Gujarat during the 2002 riots. Judge Poonam Singh punished 18 persons, guilty of murder, with life imprisonment and five others, guilty of attempt to murder, with seven-year jail term. The charges of conspiracy, rioting, arson,...

-CNN-IBN   The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Constitutional validity of the Right to Education Act, saying that there will be 25 per cent reservation in government, local authority schools and private schools for children from the economically weaker sections of the society.   A bench comprising Chief Justice SH Kapadia and justices KS Radhakrishnan and Swantanter Kumar, which had reserved its verdict on August 3, 2011, upheld the validity of provisions of...

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the various provisions of the Right to Education Act, 2009. The apex court ruled that the RTE Act would apply to all categories of public and private schools except unaided minority schools. The SC judgement makes it clear that all schools will have to keep aside 25% of seats for poor children. The SC said the judgement would come into effect from today. The SC said the RTE...

An unnecessary controversy has been started by the release of the poverty estimates of 2009-10 by the planning commission. The controversy, which was entirely avoidable, was allowed to go on because of the poor handling of the issue by the planning commission. It is unfortunate that the planning commission was less than willing to own the Tendulkar committee report which was submitted in December 2009 and accepted by the commission...