The report on illegal mining in Karnataka, compiled by Lokayukta Santosh Hegde and his team, may spell the end of the first Bharatiya Janata Party government in south India. While the report is voluminous, here are a few details of what the Lokayukta and his team have found while probing the illegal mining scam. In the report the Lokayukta clearly makes charges against Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa and Minister for...

The Supreme Court criticises the Chhattisgarh and Central governments and orders the disbanding of Salwa Judum. THE case Nandini Sundar vs State of Chhattisgarh arose out of a writ petition (civil) filed in 2007 in the Supreme Court by Nandini Sundar, a Professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics; Ramachandra Guha, a historian; and E.A.S. Sarma, former Secretary to Government of India and former Commissioner, Tribal Welfare, Government...

The draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill 2011, proposed by the NAC, has attracted welcome debate. Any legislative measure, intended to correct a historical wrong, should indeed be subject to the closest scrutiny to improve and strengthen it. For if we get this right it can help realise, far better than we have so far, the constitutional guarantees of equality before the law. This bill is built on India’s...

Anna Hazare's campaign against corruption has a curious side-effect. It has turned the spotlight on India's lack of pre-legislative transparency. We may accept or dismiss team Anna's Jan Lokpal draft but his movement — and the subsequent build-up of hope and betrayal — has unwittingly exposed the systemic opaqueness in which our laws are conceived, written, debated and passed. The Lokpal Bill 2011 is one among 67-odd bills listed as...

-The Telegraph   The finance and law ministries have locked horns over who will lead the battle against black money. A meeting of a finance ministry probe team under the chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has been put off indefinitely following a Supreme Court order to set up a special investigative team (SIT), headed by former apex court judge B.P. Jeevan Reddy, to probe illicit funds. While the panel...