CONCERNED over the rapidly deteriorating health condition of Prof Saibaba, a person with disability, who is in solitary confinement in the Nagpur Central Jail a delegation met the Registrar of the National Human Rights Commission on June 1 and handed over a memorandum addressed to the chairman of the NHRC.

CPI(M) general secretary and member of parliament, Sitaram Yechury has written a letter to the minister for social justice and empowerment, Thawar Chand Gehlot on May 16, 2017 expressing concern over the manner in which rules are being framed for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act.

AFTER the massive win in Uttar Pradesh, the prime minister has announced that the stage is set for a ‘New India’ which is based on development and not on the politics of caste or religion. This claim is based on the understanding that the people of UP defied the caste and religious equations this time to defeat the forces of ‘castiest’ and ‘communal politics of BSP and SP-INC combine’ in order to support social harmony and development in the state.

GIVEN the republican thrust of the Indian constitution, the above title might look quite anachronistic to some. This is because Indian constitution does not allow for such a reading as its republican character eliminates the need for hierarchical or parallel conception of sovereignty. The republican character of the Indian constitution makes people uniformly sovereign thus ruling out any competing conception of sovereignty.

ONE year has gone by since the sad demise of Rohith Vemula and still justice seems delayed and surely justice looks denied. The collective efforts by the central government, the state KCR-government and even the TDP government to iteratively nullify the national SC commission report certifying Rohith as dalit, and initiate fresh investigations after investigations to declare him not a dalit out-rightly shows the casteist nature of their involvements as organisations working in our society.