-The Times of India AGRA: The Uttar Pradesh government has sent out letters to the Muzaffarnagar DM and SSP asking for their views on the withdrawal of criminal cases against BJP leaders, some of them ministers now, allegedly involved in the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 that rendered more than 50,000 homeless and left 63 dead. The letter, sent from the office of the special secretary, Raj Singh, in the department of justice,...

-The Hindu Jaipur: Upping the ante against the Vasundhara Raje government, leading Hindi daily Rajasthan Patrika on Thursday left its editorial blank, with a thick black border, to register its strong opposition to the controversial criminal law ordinance that puts restrictions on the media and gives protection to public servants. The newspaper headquartered in Jaipur, which has already announced its boycott of Chief Minister Raje, decided to leave the editorial blank on...

-The Indian Express Vasundhara Raje government will present The Code of Criminal Procedure (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill to replace the ordinance during this Assembly session. The Editors Guild of India has expressed “deep concern” about the Rajasthan Government’s decision to make the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance 2017 into an Act in the current legislative session. “(It) was ostensibly done to protect the judiciary and the bureaucracy against false FIRs. But in reality it...

-The Telegraph Lucknow: Once bitten, the Yogi Adityanath administration acted fast when reports came of mass baby deaths at a hospital in Farrukhabad that had allegedly failed to administer oxygen to them, registering an FIR against two senior doctors. But the decision, on the basis of a probe by a "non-technical team" of civil servants, has prompted government doctors in the western district to strike work till Wednesday and threaten mass resignation...

-The Hindu Fifty years since the Green Revolution, the architect of the reform highlights the crisis facing Indian agriculture today It is 11 years since agronomist M.S. Swaminathan handed over his recommendations for improving the state of agriculture in India to the former United Progressive Alliance government, at the height of the Vidarbha farmer suicides crisis, but they are still to be implemented. To address the agrarian crisis and farmers’ unrest across...