The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court has given “oral permission” to two lawyers to argue their cases in Tamil. This is only an “oral permission” while English continues to be the only official language in the court through its 148-year-old history. As one of the lawyers has pointed out, the legal fraternity sometimes feel the legal debate could have been qu
A Supreme Court bench has cleared Andhra Pradesh`s move to grant reservation for “socially and educationally backward classes” of Muslims, while a constitution bench will take a final decision. The very word reservation or quota elicits sharp reactions in India and the latest move only adds one more dimension – of religion – to the debate. While those who favour the poli
National Commission for Minorities chairman Shafi Qureshi has urged the government to review the decision to let Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen live in India. In a letter to the home minister and the external affairs minister, he has said that she is in the “chronic habit” of “demonising” and “cursing” Islam. Any debate on freedom of expres
Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit`s statement that beef will not be served during the Commonwealth Games has provoked quite an unholy row in athletic and political circles. Delhi government has said it is bound by the law that bans sale of beef. Before the cows could say moo to that, though, the chief executive officer of the Commonwealth Games Federation told Mint newspaper that if Kuala Lum
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi appears to have turned the tables on the media, to say little of the Supreme Court-supervised Special Investigation Team (SIT). Not only did Modi not visit the team`s Gandhinagar office, which was apparently kept specially open on March 21, a Sunday, but also a day later he claimed that despite the frenetic build-up in the media no date had really been fixed
Mani Shankar Aiyar wears many hats: a former minister, former bureaucrat, foreign policy expert and a regular on Delhi`s party circuit as well as TV talk shows. A very erudite politician, but essentially a politician. Nobody would say, "Mani Shankar Aiyar? You mean, that author of books on secularism?" Yet, he has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha as a litterateur. This, after he lost
Prices of food items are either rising or stabilising at higher levels, but they are not decreasing. If it was sugar that was becoming costlier yesterday, now it is the turn of milk – Mother Dairy has increased the price of milk, just as prophesied by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar a couple of months ago. Don`t be surprised if some party spokespersons says milk is not good for
One of the key reasons for the poor health services in rural India is lack of doctors. As Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad lamented the other day, doctors are just not willing to serve in rural areas, no matter how lucrative the incentives are or how tough the penalties. Attempts to make compulsory rural posting have also failed because the doctors now have a wider choice with mushrooming
The supreme court-appointed central vigilance committee has confirmed, once again, what is widely known: the entire PDS system has collapsed. Various corrupt practices like largescale diversion of foodgrain and cooking oil, blackmarketing, bogus card holders etc have completely paralysed this welfare scheme devised to help the poor and the needy. Most of
Arun Shourie has argued that the policy of reservation has failed in its objective. According to a report in The Indian Express, the journalist-politician has said that underprivileged and deserving people are yet to get the benefits of reservation. Shourie has suggested that the government should therefore provide better nutrition and education facilities to the underprivileged sections of the
Arun Shourie has argued that the policy of reservation has failed in its objective. According to a report in The Indian Express, the journalist-politician has said that underprivileged and deserving people are yet to get the benefits of reservation. Shourie has suggested that the government should therefore provide better nutrition and education facilities to the underprivileged sections of the
There should ideally be no two ways about it. Public money should not be spent on a political rally, as Bahujan Samaj Party has apparently done to celebrate its quarter century. Confounded by the colour blue that symbolises the Dalit party, though, some could argue that the extravaganza would only instil a sense of empowerment among the most marginalised sections of Indian society. Surely, then
As it becomes increasingly clear, opposition to women`s quota bill is not restricted to the usual suspects--SP, BSP, RJD and a JD(U). In the last two days several BJP MPs have come forward to express their opposition to it. In fact, party`s chief whip was quoted by newspapers as saying that nearly 70 percent of the party MPs were against it. Finally, L K Advani had to step in to persuade the di
The Haryana finance minister in his budget speech Wednesday has announced that the state proposes to create a cadre for IT professionals for smooth implementation and sustenance of e-governance initiatives. Currently, majority of the states are either hiring professionals on contract on rolls of their e-governance / IT societies or are employing consulting organisations to establ
The Yadavs--Lalu Prasad, Mulayam Singh and Sharad Yadav--definitely want it. Their supporters continue to paralyse parliament to have it their way. Now even Trinamool Congress` Mamatadi wants a sub-quota for Muslim women. They say the quota would be cornered by the `par kati` bahus and betis of the upper caste leaders. But the main political players--the Left, t
The fiasco over the Women`s Reservation Bill in Rajya Sabha leads one to doubt the government`s sincerity. The very same Manmohan Singh government had got the nuclear deal through at a great risk of its own survival a couple of years ago. It didn`t have the numbers and its key ally, the CPM, had withdrawn support. The very same Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, put everything at s
We all know that Chief Justice of India K. G. Balakrishnan didn’t want assets of the judges to be made public. His argument was that this would put unnecessary pressure on the judges. But one after the other, high court judges started defying him and went public with their asset details. We also know that the government wanted to keep him in good humour and tried to bring in a bill last y
The Delhi High Court, in a recent order, reduced the punishment awarded to a rapist on the grounds that his crime did not merit maximum punishment because it was not accompanied by brutality. The accused, a tutor, had raped his minor student. “Brutality at the time of rape has to be factored in. If the rape is accompanied by acts of brutality, higher sentence should be imposed,” the
The government is implementing the unique ID project under the leadership of Nandan Nilekani and UIDAI has plans to issue the UID numbers this year. The UID authority has mentioned that the UID database will not be read by anybody and will be used only for authentication, but in the absence of any law (like the right to privacy) the concern for privacy remains. Also, there
When United States President Barack Obama was recently declared fit for duty following his first periodic physical examination as president, all details of the medical test were made public. So everybody came to know that even as the US president was found in good health, his physician, Dr Jeffrey Kuhlman, had cautioned him against smoking and consumption of alcohol and junk food.
