Come up with Ordinance before electoral code to stop eviction of forest dwellers: Letter to Modi

By A Representative
PS Krishnan, IAS (retd), former secretary to Government of India, Ministry of Welfare, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, referring to BJP chief Amit Shah and his Congress counterpart Rahul Gandhi asking their respective party chief ministers to file review petitions against the Supreme Court’s order of February 13, 2019, has said, it is good that an all-party consensus on STs' forest rights, but this is not enough.
The apex court order had allegedly endangered the rights of over a million forest dwellers over forest land. According to Krishnan, such review petitions "virtually never lead to positive results", insisting, "What is required is decisive action, which will at one stroke resolve the problem, and this has to be through the legislative route and, initially, at this pre-election stage though the Ordinance route."
Asking him to "consider issue of such an Ordinance, before the Election Code of Conduct comes into force", Krishnan says, "The Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (ABVKA), which has been working since decades among STs, has also, in its resolution adopted in its Kendriya Karyakari Mandal meeting at Satna on February 24, 2019 demanded that the Central Government should intervene in this matter through an Ordinance."
Recalling the decision of tribal organizations to call a Bharat Bandh on March 5, 2019, Krishnan said, "It would be called off only if the Centre brings an Ordinance before March 5, 2019. It is in the interest of the Government and in the interest of building up confidence in the system of democratic governance that the Ordinance is issued without the Bandh being necessary and before the Bandh takes place." He adds, "Consequence of such Bandhs will not be pleasant."

Right to walk, right to livelihood: Clearing footpaths 'can't mean' clearing out the urban poor

By Aseem Mishra* India’s cities are locked in a quiet but intensifying struggle over one of their most contested public spaces: the footpath. For pedestrians, a footpath is basic infrastructure—a strip of ground that should allow people to move safely, independently and with dignity. For millions of informal workers, the same stretch of pavement is a workplace, a source of daily income and often the difference between survival and destitution.

Ample evidence of child labour in South Gujarat's cash rich sugarcane belt: Study

By Rajiv Shah A recent German government-funded study , undertaken jointly by the NGO Prayas Centre for Labour Research and Action and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, which mainly deals examines the working conditions of migrant workers in the cash-rich sugarcane zone of South Gujarat, has gone a long way to suggest large scale prevalence of child labour during the harvesting season.

Women lawyers petition Supreme Court, seek reconsideration of Aug 4 order on bar council co-option

By A Representative A group of women advocates who stood sixth and seventh among female candidates in the recent Bar Council elections have filed a petition before the Supreme Court, seeking a recall and reconsideration of the Court’s August 4 order determining the mechanism for co-opting women into State Bar Councils.

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