-The Hindu The government's refrain that it would resort to all procedures, including a joint sitting of Parliament, to legislate a spate of ordinances into Acts of legislature, may come to nothing if the Rajya Sabha is stalled in the next session. For one, a pre-condition for a joint sitting is that a Bill, along with a statement of reasons for promulgating the ordinance, should have been first defeated in one...

-Frontline SHUBHANKAR DAM, Assistant Professor of Law at Singapore Management University School of Law, is the author of Presidential Legislation in India: The Law and Practice of Ordinances (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which has received wide acclaim among scholars of constitutional law. Against the backdrop of his insightful critique on the necessity of ordinances in a democracy, Professor Dam discusses in this interview the recent controversy triggered by the Bharatiya Janata...

-The Indian Express It was an interesting discussion. The subject was the recent ordinance promulgated by the government of Rajasthan banning men and women without a Class X certificate from contesting zila parishad and panchayat samiti elections. To contest at the sarpanch level, a candidate will need to have passed Class VIII (Class V in tribal areas). In this state, with a particularly poor record of literacy among women, tribals and...

-India Today Delhi attracts a bad name for its crime, traffic snarls and governance, but statistics generated by an international survey reveal that the national capital fares well in many ways when compared to other cities like London, New York, Tokyo, Istanbul and Berlin. Delhi's performance across a number of indicators was compared to these cities in terms of economy, population, society, governance, density, green space, environment and transport during the study...

-Live Mint   Despite its importance, reform of India's legal institutions has been seen as a ‘second order' issue India is a young nation long ruled by old laws-its police, for example, are governed by such colonial-era statutes as the Police Act of 1861, which predates independence by nearly a century. And its expanding economy requires forward-looking regulatory mechanisms to foster markets while curbing crony capitalism. India is also a nation that must...