Six months before India's human rights gets reviewed at the United Nations, the Working Group on Human Rights (WGHR) in India released a report painting a dismal picture of its rights record. The U.N. Human Rights Council examines the rights record of its members on a rotational basis every four years through a peer review process, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Reports by the civil society, U.N. agencies and the country...

-The Hindu   Say youths, accused of involvement in Jaipur blasts, declared innocent now Two-and-a-half years ago, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot announced in a national conference on internal security in New Delhi that the horrifying case of serial blasts in Jaipur on May 13, 2008 — in which 69 persons were killed — stood resolved with the arrest of “radical youths” in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh as well as some Students Islamic...

The Chhattisgarh High Court has directed that no further action be taken towards granting environmental clearance to a coal mine operated by DB Power Ltd, a subsidiary of DB Corp, one of India's largest media corporations. The respondents have been given three weeks to reply. A writ petition filed in the court accuses the company of adopting “deliberate, illegal and manipulative” measures to influence the outcome of a public hearing held...

With the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance raising a red flag against the National Identification Authority of India (NIAI) Bill to grant the UID (or Aadhar) project legal status, the project looks set for a slowdown . That could have broad implications for the tech sector that had laid substantial hope on it, especially when global markets are slowing down.  The UID project is estimated to offer IT companies a Rs...

-The Hindu Business Line   The Millet Network of India (MINI), a group of associations that is promoting consumption of millets, has expressed concern about non-inclusion of local procurement provision in the latest version of the National Food security Bill. In a letter addressed to Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh and Ms Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson of United Progressive Alliance, MINI has demanded that this clause should be included again in the draft bill....