-The Hindu Isolated innovations are not enough to stop cases of custodial torture In May 2017, addressing representatives from countries at the UN’s Human Rights Council, the then Attorney General of India said, “The concept of torture is completely alien to our culture and it has no place in the governance of the nation.” Last week in Sitamarhi district, Bihar, two families received the bodies of their two sons from the police. The...

-The Indian Express The police collected papers related to the RTI applications that he filed “as evidence for the investigation” on Tuesday, from his home. Ahmedabad: TV9 copy editor Chirag Patel, 26, whose charred body was found on Saturday from near a canal on Ahmedabad’s outskirts, used to regularly file RTIs — one of them seeking details of how MPLAD (Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme) funds were used, police...

-Hindustan Times From a constitutional point of view, the scheme fails the tests of rationality and non-arbitrariness Earlier this month, the Supreme Court indicated that it would hear the long-pending constitutional challenge to the electoral bonds scheme. The electoral bonds scheme, which was introduced by the government in early 2018, provides new channels for private funding of political parties, and has been subjected to severe criticism, including by a former Chief Election...

-The Hindu Business Line Farmers observe fast to ‘denounce apathy’ to agrarian crisis Pune: Thousands of farmers and activists in Maharashtra observed a day-long fast on Tuesday to commemorate the suicide of Sahebrao Karpe, the first farmer to end his life in the State, and to denounce what they called the government’s apathy towards the agrarian crisis. Karpe, a farmer from drought-prone Yavatmal district of Maharashtra, committed suicide along with his wife and...

-The Hindu Sabotaging the Forest Rights Act damages democracy Since 1980, through the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) has “diverted for non-forest use” (bureaucratese for destroyed) over 1.5 million hectares of forest. How many Adivasis and forest-dwellers have been evicted by this ‘lawful’ forest destruction? Stripping these forests has yielded thousands of crores of rupees for corporations to which a bulk of these forestlands...