-The Hindu   The Maharashtra Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal of granting State Minorities Commission judicial powers. A press release, issued by the Chief Minister's Public Relations Officer, stated that the government will make an amendment to the 2004 ordinance related to the Minorities commission and will add the section 10(a)(1) to it. The additional powers will enable the commission to summon officers, call for official papers and documentary evidence and record...

The Supreme Court has rejected a five-decade-old perception built on the basis of several reports of Commissions of Inquiry that during communal violence the police were generally biased against minority community and arrested the victims instead of the assailants. "No one can perhaps dispute that in certain cases such aberrations may have taken place. But, we do not think that such instances are enough to denounce or condemn the entire force,...

The quantum is well below expectations of Muslims who have been pressing for exclusive reservation of 10% The Union government's much-anticipated quota-within-quota sop for Minorities as a whole has left Muslim groups confused and groping for answers. On Thursday, the Union Cabinet marked off 4.5 percentage points from within the 27 per cent OBC Central quota, allocating the share to religious Minorities, among them Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Jains. (In the 2001...

-The Hindu   The government's decision on a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for Minorities within the overall 27 per cent reservation for the backward classes promises to be the new trigger for a heated political discourse just ahead of several Assembly elections, including the all-important poll in Uttar Pradesh just a few months away. More than a decade ago, the V.P. Singh government ushered in the ‘Mandal revolution' in North India. It...

The setting aside of 50% of seats in the proposed Lokpal for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, women and Minorities, triggered a sharp debate within parties today around a central, normative question: should social diversity, especially inclusion of Minorities, weigh in an empowered body to “fight corruption?”   While the BJP has opposed it and Team Anna, caught off-guard on a sensitive political issue, has declined to comment, legal experts...