-The Hindu   The Election Commission on Wednesday warned television and radio channels and cable television networks not to air any programme, including news, talk shows and panel discussions during the prohibited period — 48 hours prior to the end of polling hours — which might influence the voter or affect the result. Airing such programmes violated Section 126 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, the Commission said, adding that violators,...

-The Economic Times   The Supreme Court has pulled up the Prime Minister's Office for taking 16 months to decide on an application from Janata Party PresidentSubramaniam Swamy to prosecute then telecom minister A Raja.  However, a bench comprising Justices AK Ganguly and GS Singhvi appeared to absolve Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of any personal blame on the ground that he could not be expected to go into details of every case before...

Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services —making it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed Without getting into questions of what should and should not be unlawful speech, let's take a look at how Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services, and how it makes it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed. --Pranesh Prakash...

-The Economic Times   A government-appointed committee has recommended a complete overhaul of government accounting norms with a view to enforcing transparency and better monitoring of public spending.  In its report submitted to finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, the C R Sundaramurti Committee has suggested rationalisation and reorganisation of the existing account classification of list of major and minor heads of accounts (LMMHA) of centre and states."  The proposed accounting classification structure will provide a...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The Reliance/Network18 deal should make us wake up to the impending threat to media plurality. Few are discussing it. India has just seen one of the biggest media deals, where the country’s leading industrial and business giant has bought into the largest network of news and current affairs TV Channels. Yet, the fact that this could mark the beginning of a trend leading to private media being controlled...