In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-Press release by Common Cause dated 19th April, 2021 New Delhi: There are silences and gaps in the law that the questionable elements in the police take advantage of and undermine the rule of law, said Justice Madan B Lokur, former Justice of the Supreme Court of India. Delivering the Keynote Address on ‘Is the Rule of Law Backsliding in India?’ at the launch of the Status of Policing in India Report...

-The Hindu The general election saw serious questions being posed to the Election Commission. The 17th Lok Sabha must deliberate on them The biggest election in the world has finally come to a successful end for which the three Election Commissioners and their 12 million staff deserve appreciation. Unfortunately, what deserved to be remembered as a subject of national pride became mired in several controversies. At the top of the list was...

-The Times of India Blog Prakash Singh, former IPS officer who also headed the Border Security Force, dealt with naxalism in its early stages. He continues to research the movement. In a conversation with Sugandha Indulkar, he shares his idea of urban naxalism. * What is urban naxalism? Urban naxalism, in simplest terms, implies naxalism as practised in urban areas by different shades of intellectuals – lawyers, journalists, writers, doctors, professors or people...

-The Times of India In time of a raging debate over jobless growth, nearly 24 lakh posts are lying vacant with the central and state governments, data compiled from answers to various questions in Parliament show. A Rajya Sabha question answered on February 8 shows that the largest chunk is the over 10 lakh vacant positions for teachers in elementary (9 lakh) and secondary schools (1.1 lakh). Apart from the vacancies in the...