-The Telegraph   BMW hit-and-run key accused Sanjeev Nanda, who is a free man now, today urged the Supreme Court not to use his case to settle the law on whether culpable homicide not amounting to murder or criminal negligence charges should be invoked in such cases. Those accused in hit-and-run cases are routinely slapped with IPC Section 304A (causing death by negligence), which carries a maximum jail term of two years or...

In a path-breaking measure, which could become an issue of discussion in some quarters, the Union government has decided to involve missionary groups of various hues in taking its programmes to the people in areas affected by Naxalite activities. Apart from giving the green signal to engage Ramakrishna Mission Ashram in Narainpur district in Chhattisgarh, which the Communist Party of India (Maoist) claims to be a liberated zone, Union Minister of...

The use of tracker technology to zero in on the misuse of diagnostic techniques for sex determination has evoked mixed reactions. ONE of the least discussed issues in the context of the data thrown up by Census 2011 is the worrisome decline in the child sex ratio (CSR) and the not-too-perfect implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, or PCPNDT Act. There is reason to...

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance finds the UID project to be “conceptualised with no clarity” and “directionless”. THE Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has dealt a body blow to the Unique Identification (UID) project. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was set up under the Planning Commission by an executive order on January 28, 2009. The scheme involves the collection of demographic and biometric information to issue ID numbers to...

Not only are the Forest Rights Act and the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act routinely violated in Chhattisgarh, the adivasis are also short-changed on legislative representation and reservations in government jobs. As the state cedes land to capital while reducing the adivasis to an ornamental presence, there is increasing assertion of adivasi identity, born out of class predicaments and experiences of displacement as much as notions of indigeneity. Supriya Sharma...