The roller-coaster ride of the government-civil society joint drafting committee on the Lokpal (ombudsman) Bill has ended in a draw, but left both sides badly injured. Whether the tie will be broken when they present their separate recommendations to a proposed all-party committee in July remains an open question. Yet, this is a good time to draw up a balance-sheet of the government's first-ever effort to take on board civil...

The episodes of violence in land acquisition by the government, as witnessed recently in Bhatta-Parsaul in Uttar Pradesh and in other states earlier, occur because patterns of violence are inbuilt into the process. Despite a bill pending in Parliament since 2007, there has been little effort by political parties to evolve a consensus on acquisition of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. The law as at present and also the provisions...

One of the most shameful pieces of legislation in our penal code is the continuance of ‘Sedition’ in Section 124A of the Penal Code which provides that whoever excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law in India shall be punished with imprison-ment for life. The expression disaffection includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity. This provision was included by the British Government in 1870 as...

-The Economic Times The Parliamentary Standing Committee on finance has questioned the government's move to introduce a right to food bill when it did not have a single, widely-accepted definition of the poor. The "criteria of identification of the poor remains nebulous," the Yashwant Sinha-headed committee has observed. The proposed food security bill, seen as the largest such legislation anywhere in the world, hinges on the definition of the poor. The...

-PTI   With an all-party meeting scheduled on July 3 to discuss the Lokpal Bill, it would be subsequently tabled in the Parliament in the monsoon session, Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V Narayansamy said today. The "bill will certainly be tabled" before the Parliament in the monsoon session starting on August 1, Narayanasamy told reporters at the airport here, adding, Congress alone was taking efforts to bring in the...