-The Telegraph Chief Justice says the Union and State Governments account for 50 per cent of the cases in the country Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana on Saturday castigated “illegal arrests”, custody torture and biased investigations by police while spelling out why governments deserved most of the blame for the backlog of 4 crore court cases in the country. “If police investigations are fair, if illegal arrests and custodial torture come to...

-Hindustan Times  THE BIG STORY: How five Adivasi women and a Gandhian activist scored a huge win for anganwadi workers After 21 years of service when Maniben Maganbhai Bhariya, an Adivasi women working as an anganwadi helper in district Dahod, Gujarat, retired on February 20, 2006 she was drawing a salary of Rs 1,250 a month. Based on this, Maniben was entitled to a one-time gratuity of Rs 14,423. Seven years later when...

-The Hindu What is the Opposition-ruled States’ stand on reduction of value added tax to bring down petrol prices?  The story so far: Petrol is retailing at more than ₹100 per litre across India. While rising crude oil prices have added to the burden, the primary reason behind the steep increase in pump fuel prices over the last few years is the gradually rising Central Government's excise duty component. Currently, for every...

-Newsclick.in The central government has raked in over Rs18 lakh crore from excise duties compared to Rs14 lakh crore from taxes by all State Governments over the past eight years. Yet again, the government has tried to obfuscate the exorbitant petrol/diesel prices by blaming State Governments. This time, it was the Prime Minister himself who blamed some Opposition-ruled states for not reducing taxes like the Value Added Tax (VAT) after the central...

-Hindustan Times In view of the shortage of coal, a dominant fuel used to generate electricity in the country, the government halted hundreds of passenger trains. Meanwhile, state-run Coal India ramped up coal production by 27.2% in April. Several states across the country reeled under long power cuts, as hotter-than-normal temperatures pushed the electricity demand, triggering a major power crisis. According to a report by Reuters, electricity supply fell short of demand...