Considered close to the BJP-RSS dispensation, Firoz Bakht Ahmed, formerly chancellor of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University and grandnephew of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, has approached the Supreme Court for a ban on talaq-e-hasan, a form of divorce by which a Muslim man can divorce his wife by pronouncing talaq once every month over a three-month period. He insisted, the perpetrators of this form of talaq should be jailed for 10-years.

Top Supreme Court advocate Vrinda Grover has said that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs under Amit Shah has "allowed" the controversial remission granted to 11 gang rape and murder convicts in the Bilkis Bano case on August 15. Speaking in Ahmedabad before Gujarat activists gathered for a lecture in memory of well-known state high court lawyer Girish Patel, she said, “It is mandatory for the Central government to approve the remission.” Grover, a human rights lawyer, said, there is “radio silence” on the part of the Government of India on providing remission, despite so much of noise around it. However, the very fact that the committee appointed by the Gujarat government for giving remission is legally bound to take the approval of the Central government suggests that without the latter’s approval the remission would not have happened. “Hence, I assume the Ministry of Home Affairs concurrence was taken”, Grover underlined, regretting, however, “No documents h...

A new study has blamed the Government of India (GoI) for seeking to create “inviolate spaces” -- spaces devoid of human presence -- in the core areas of the country’s 53 tiger reserves, thus allegedly undermining the forest rights of the communities residing in these areas for centuries. At the same time, it notes, ironically, the GoI  is acting fast to implement of “big and small linear infrastructure projects” within their vicinity in the name of development, "adversely affecting" the tiger reserves.

The Supreme Court has directed the Government of India to increase coverage under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) so that “more and more needy persons/citizens get the benefit” under NFSA, insisting the government must "consider projection of population increase during the decade 2011-2021 so that benefits are not restricted to the coverage as per 2011 census."

Eleven world renowned academics have said, they are "deeply disturbed" by some of the recent judgements of the Supreme Court, which have a direct bearing on the future of civil liberties and human rights in India" even as drawing attention, in particular, to the judgement in the Zakia Jafri case, which "raises three disturbing questions." In a plea to the Supreme Court, the academics said, "First, since the petitioners had challenged the findings of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) report that gave a clean chit to the Gujarat government for the riots following the Godhra incident, and asked the Supreme Court to order an independent investigation, for the Court to dismiss their appeal on the basis of the very same impugned SIT report seems to us to be unjust." Secondly, they said "while dismissing the petitioners' appeal, the "Court has quite gratuitously and wholly unfairly attributed ulterior motives to the petitioners. This has eve...

It was amusing to see Congress reaction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi omitting the name of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru from the names of those who fought for India's freedom. Of all persons, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said, the party "will oppose the wrong statements made on historical facts for political benefits and every attempt to question great national leaders like Gandhi-Nehru-Patel-Azad on the basis of lies.” Ironic though it may seem, whatever I know of Congress, its leaders or cadres (whatever they are left, now) have paid scant respect to the "Gandhi-Nehru-Patel-Azad" legacy. My visits to Congress office in Ahmedabad as also offices and residences of party leaders has made me firmly believe: they don't care about the foursome Sonia has sought to identify. In fact, visit any of these places, and you will only see photos of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and (now) Priyanka Gandhi -- as if the four towering persons didn't exis...

The All-India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA) has said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah "must answer for the decision to free Bilkis Bano's gang rapists." In a statement, AIPWA has wondered, "What was the basis of the Gujarat Government’s decision to free those men on August 15, 2022, to celebrate what the PM Modi calls India’s Amrit Kaal? Was remission and freedom a reward for rape and murder of Muslims?"

In a move which may raise many an eyebrow, a Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi-supported child rights NGO has celebrated Prime Minister Narendra Modi-intitiated Har Ghar Tiranga by commemorating 75 freedom fighters by "narrating their famous deeds and chanting slogans of each leader", including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Lala Lajpat Rai and a person who had little or nothing common with the freedom movement -- RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar.

Top Supreme Court advocate and human rights defender Prashant Bhushan has alleged the Apex Court is complicit in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s "comprehensive assault on civil and political liberties of religious minorities such as Muslims; human rights defenders; the civilian population of India’s only Muslim-majority province of Kashmir; the government’s critics; and dissenters." “The Supreme Court has been virtually abdicating its role as the guardian of civil liberties and human rights of the people in India,” Bhushan said at a briefing organized by US-based civil and political rights groups. “[The Supreme Court has] indeed gone further in some cases to even assault the civil liberties of the citizens.” The Constitution gave the Supreme Court the “very important responsibility of protecting fundamental rights [and] human rights of the citizens” and ensuring “that the executive and the legislature function within the norms or within the bounds of their power.” But the cour...

Noticing the emergence of a novel trend, a just-released report based on a fact-finding team's observations following its interaction in particular with Hindu and Muslim political activists, administrators and police officials, has claimed that a major reason why chasm between the two communities in Gujarat has lately reached new heights is, a veritable competition between Hindu right-wing groups and leaders to capture the existing communal space. Titled "Hindu Right, Communal Riots and Demolitions: Emerging Pattern of Communal Riots in India", the report has been prepared against the backdrop of what it calls "low intensity" communalism which has characterised rioting in Gujarat in the recent past, especially after the 2002 communal carnage, one of the worst in Independent India. Especially focusing on riots in two Gujarat towns, Himmatnagar and Khambhat, which took place on April 10, the day clashes broke also out in different parts of India on t...

The anti-untouchability caravan led by top Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, stopped about five kilometres inside Haryana, allegedly on instructions from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, has been forced to begin its return journey after failing to be allowed to proceed further to Delhi. It will reach Ahmedabad on Tuesday afternoon. On crossing the Haryana border and reaching Shahjahanpur, the caravan, consisting of a huge 1,111 kg brass coin having the photograph of Dr BR Ambedkar on one side and Lord Buddha on the other about 25 lakh one rupee coins and a huge Ambadkar statue, was stopped on August 7 evening by a large posse of the state police, which also put up barricades. Consisting of six buses with 350 Dalit activists and four trucks loaded with the huge brass coin, the Ambedkar statue, and 25 lakh one rupee coins, the activists sat for the whole day on dharna on August 8. Kirit Rathod, a senior activist, termed the refusal of the Haryana...

Raising a series of demands following a meeting of the Samast Machimaar Samaj (Gujarat), Gujarat's small fisherfolk have insisted that they should be entitled to land rights over the sea coast, pointing out, projects along the coastal regions "adversely affect" their livelihood, a fact overlooked by policy makers. Issues discussed at the meeting held in Ahmedabad included clean drinking water at the fishing ports, angandwadis for children, schools near fishing ports, electricity connection, transportation facilities at ports, connection of roads from ports to their villages and main roads, removal of taxes imposed on diesel, rapid implementation of diesel subsidies for boats, kerosene supply to outboard motor boats, and so on. They also discussed rapid registration of boats following a complete survey, fish market facilities for women and cold storage facilities for fish catch, asserting, these issues and demands would be soon placed before the state gove...

A civil society tracker, seeking to periodically analyse the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), has said that NREGA budgetary allocation is only 0.29% of GDP and 1.85% of the total government expenditure of the financial year 2022-23, which is grossly inadequate. Thus, “As per estimates of researchers of the World Bank, for NREGA to run robustly, its allocation must at least be 1.6% of the GDP.”

In a US Congressional briefing, two Facebook employees-turned-whistleblowers Frances Haugen and Sophie Zhang have slammed a human rights report from Meta , the company that owns Facebook, for failing to acknowledge its role in spreading disinformation and hate speech in India, especially from those belonging to India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That Meta’s first-ever global Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) report released in July has failed to address its complicity in the spread of disinformation in India underscored that the social media giant prioritized profit over combating hate, Haugen and Zhang said at the Congressional briefing, organised by several US-based civil rights groups, many of them consisting of Indian diaspora. The briefing was co-hosted by Genocide Watch, World Without Genocide, Indian American Muslim Council, Hindus for Human Rights, International Christian Concern, Jubilee Campaign, 21Wilberforce, Dalit Solidarity For...