-The Hindu The Supreme Court directs that public servants can only be arrested with the written permission of their appointing authority. The anti-atrocities law, which protects Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from casteist slurs and discrimination, has become an instrument to “blackmail” innocent citizens and public servants, the Supreme Court observed in a judgment on Tuesday. Issuing a slew of guidelines to protect public servants and private employees from arbitrary arrests under the...

-Livemint.com The only way to solve the farmers’ problem is to make entry to other sectors attractive by creating employment opportunities, and to make it easy to exit farming Farmers have a bad romance with the Indian polity. On the one hand, India loves, even worships, these farmers. On the other, Indian policymakers create the most impossible regulatory environment for the agricultural sector, trapping farmers in a low-income, low-productivity occupation. The latest...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre on Wednesday will start countering a mountain of legal issues heaped against Aadhaar in the Supreme Court by numerous petitioners in the last two months, primarily focussing on violation of individual’s right to privacy THRough collection and storage of biometric data. During 19 days of arguments spanning two months since it began on January 17, senior advocates Shyam Divan, Kapil Sibal, P Chidambaram, Gopal...

-The Indian Express Several commissions were either not functioning or functioning at reduced capacity as posts of Commissioners, including those of Chief Information Commissioners, were vacant during the period under review. A recent study to assess the performance of Information Commissions (ICs) by non-government organisations Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) and Centre for Equity Studies (CES) has found several shortcomings in their functioning, which impact the effectiveness of the Right to Information...

-The Hindu Law Commission asked to make draft Moving a step ahead towards framing a distinct law for online “hate speech,” the Home Ministry has written to the Law Commission to prepare a draft law. The provisions will deal with offensive messages sent THRough social media and online messaging applications. The decision came after a committee headed by former Lok Sabha Secretary General T.K. Viswanathan submitted a report recommending stricter laws to curb...