-The Telegraph The Editors’ Guild today opposed any move to empower courts to temporarily clamp down on reporting to protect the interests of parties in an ongoing case, saying it would amount to “pre-censorship” of news. Arguing for the guild, senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan opposed suggestions for a temporary gag on covering court cases — specially criminal cases and high-stakes corporate matters — if the courts felt it was adversely affecting the...

A report sent to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) by the NGO, Navsarjan, has revealed that dalits in Gujarat are frequently forced to leave their native villages because of clashes with members of forward castes. Denial of entry into temples is another reason for dalit migration in the state, the report states. The NHRC has taken serious note of the allegations made in the report. Earlier this month, it issued...

A directive by the West Bengal Government to State libraries and those sponsored by it to subscribe only to newspapers specified by it has raised the hackles of the Left parties as well as certain civic Rights activists. A circular issued by a Special Secretary of the Government directs the libraries to purchase only eight newspapers as specified by it. It provides the names of five Bengali newspapers, two Urdu and...

-The Times of India   Terming exemptions to the RTI Act introduced through the proposed Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) bill as "regressive", information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi and legal luminary Fali Nariman have urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reconsider the amendments in the interest of transparency. Nariman said the amendments were "unnecessary" and against the letter and spirit of the Act. "I am distressed to hear that the government of India proposes...

Much has been written about divorce being on the rise in India, sometimes accompanied by hand-wringing about the egos and inflexibility of younger couples, who seem less willing than their parents to stay in marriages they are not happy with. National statistics don’t exist on divorce in India, but some local records do show a rise. Still, some experts say the divorce rate in India continues to be artificially low, because...