Teesta Setalvad, Zakia Jafri at Gulberg Society India's most renowned human rights activist who has taken up the 2002 Gujarat riots cases, Teesta Setalvad, has told Counterview that a fresh exercise by her NGO, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), suggests that “as many as 1,926 lives were lost in the reprisal violence that broke out after the Godhra tragedy from February 28, 2002.”

A top  data site  has revealed that sales of manufactured goods fell 3.7% during 2015-16 – the first decline in seven years – sparking fears of layoffs in the coming months. In a major expose, quoting Reserve Bank of India (RBI) figures, the site says, “The sales of manufactured goods were falling even before demonetisation, affecting sectors ranging from textiles to leather to steel.”

A fact-finding committee has estimated that 11,200 acres of revenue land of 127 villages, apart from 6,600 acres of forest land, would be submerged in Andhra Pradesh as a result of the proposed Rs 4,910 crore Chintalapudi Lift Irrigation project. Also displacing 16 adivasi villages, the team has further estimated that 70,000 people would lose their livelihood “entirely or partially”.

  Fresh facts have come to light of dominant castes in North Gujarat villages violently reacting to refusal of Dalits to pick up dead cattle for skinning, a caste-based occupation mainly restricted to the Rohit or Chamar sub-caste, following the gruesome Una incident, in which four Rohit youths were  badly thrashed  by cow vigilantes on July 11, 2016.

  A new survey of the Aadhaar-based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) system, introduced in all Public Distribution Systems (PDS) in Hyderabad between February and March 2016, has found major “complexities and problems” with the use of the Aadhaar card for obtaining essential commodities from city’s shops.

In her  new book , “Foot Soldiers of the Constitution: A Memoir”, well-known human rights activist Teesta Setalvad wonders as to why India's High Courts and the Supreme Court, who are vested with a unique power of the suo motu jurisdiction, have failed to use it with any communal riots across the country.

India's labour freedom, as seen by Heritage Foundation In a major setback to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claimed successes in opening Indian market for foreign investors, the world’s foremost conservative political think tank, Heritage Foundation, has  ranked  India 143rd in economic freedom index, worse than Pakistan (141st), Bangladesh (128th), Nepal (125th), and Sri Lanka (112th).

A high-profile online survey in 23 countries, including India, claims that 63% Indians, one of the highest among the countries surveyed, insist on the need to to prioritise stopping terrorism over protecting civil rights. While the average for the 23 countries is 45%, interviewees from only two countries feel so more strongly about this – Serbia 73% and Turkey 69%.

Is the Madhya Pradesh government preparing to forcibly evict about 5,000 project affected families (PAFs) of the Narmada dam after July 31, the date said to have been fixed up the Supreme Court (SC) to "resettle" all the dam oustees by paying them a "hefty" cash compensation?

In a development which is likely to go a long way to politically hurt Gujarat BJP rulers' pro-Narmada image, the police on Tuesday allegedly attacked protesting farmers from 15 villages of Ahmedabad district, exploding teargas shells and beating up many of them up with batons for demanding Narmada waters for irrigating their fields.

Ex-Chief Justice of India, current chairman NHRC HL Dattu (left) An authoritative report to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) by OHCHR’s affiliate, Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutes (GANHRI), has created flutter by recommending that accreditation to India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) should be deferred till November 2017.

A tribal hamlet in Gujarat surrounded by farmland In a sharp admission, a Gujarat government resolution (GR) has said that there has been "slow progress" in measuring land under the possession of tribal farmers in South Gujarat, one reason why there is a failure to hand over cultivation rights to them under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006. Under FRA, 2006, those cultivating forest land as on December 13, 2005 would become rightful owners of the land their land.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a top civil rights organization which works for transparency and accountability in Indian politics, has accused “certain parallel associations working abroad” for seeking to utilize the March 2016 amendment to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 2010, to fund political parties.

US Commission on International Religious Freedom ( USCIRF ) has asked newly-appointed President Donald Trump to put “religious freedom and human rights at the heart of all trade, aid, and diplomatic interactions with India” and urge the Government of India "to push Indian states that have adopted anti-conversion laws to repeal or amend them to conform to international norms.”

  In a major victory for Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar, who has led a relentless fight for about three decades for the Sardar Sarovar project affected families (PAFs), the Supreme Court has asked the Gujarat government to pay a whopping Rs 60 lakh compensation to Madhya Pradesh’s 581 PAFs each.

In a scathing critique of the Union budget 2017-18, India’s foremost urban development and housing expert Prof Amitabh Kundu has said that failure of the focus on affordable housing “worries him”. Pointing out that Arun Jaitley in his speech said this is “a major area of concern”, Kundu said, there is a failure to understand that “there are not many takers for loans” for affordable housing.

In an unusual admission, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said that the consumer confidence index (CCI) of people, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial noteban decision of November 8, 2016, has “worsened” by seven points.  The result is based on a survey it carried out in six metropolitan cities.

Dr BR Ambedkar, P Sainath Well-known Magsaysay award winning writer P Sainath, who is renowned more for extensive, in-depth reports on rural India as a top journalist, has said he “differs” from Dr BR Ambedkar’s view about the need for achieving greater pace of urbanization to fight caste discrimination.

Justice Joseph Well-known legal rights organization, Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR), has said that Justice KM Joseph’s non-elevation to Supreme Court judge is linked with his “bold decision striking down the imposition of President’s rule by the Centre in Uttrakhand last year.”

  The Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU), attached with the powerful British conservative weekly “The Economist”, has assessed India as ranking No 32nd, much better than the four peer countries South Africa (39th), Brazil (51st), Russia (134th), and China (136th) in its report Democracy Index 2016.

  The Government of India appears to hold the view that it wrongly acted against powerful multinational companies like  Vodafone  and  Monsanto , suggesting that actions against these and other foreign and Indian private sector companies were taken because of “the fear of being seen as favouring the private sector”.

Allocation to SC-ST In a major exposure of the Government of India’s latest budgetary exercise, a top Delhi-based civil rights group has revealed that the “Economic Survey 2016-17”, presented in Parliament on January 31, the terms Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) have been removed.

  Thousands of farmers living in the Special Investment Region (SIR), Dholera, are again showing signs of unrest following fresh eviction notices served on them to vacate their agricultural plots. Sent under the SIR Act, the notices require the farmers to part with 50% of land.

In a move that is likely to impact on the future course of the prestigious Narmada project in Gujarat, the Supreme Court has decided to form a high-level committee consisting of senior lawyers and experts under its guidance to ensure allocation of land to the dam oustees in Madhya Pradesh.