From the latest Frontline

On why the Supreme Court's judgment prescribing death penalty to the convicts in Encounter death cases does not really address the problem.

A tale of two dams. Why Jairam Ramesh's order lifting the stay on Maheshwar dam is not convincing.

The Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill has an interesting trajectory.

Other articles can be accessed here.

From the latest Frontline

*The encounter guidelines case in the Supreme Court (PUCL v. State of Maharashtra)is taking an interesting turn with almost all the States and the UOI having responded to PUCL/Prashant Bhushan's 20 draft guidelines, which are improved versions of those recommended by the Bombay High Court and the NHRC. Now it is PUCL's turn to reply to those counter-affidavits filed by the UOI and the States. In this piece (Evading Guidelines), I give a detailed account of the case, followed by an interview with Prashant Bhushan.

*Rajmohan Gandhi's 'A Tale of Two Revolts' is a fascinating book which I read and reread recently. I followed it up with an interview with the author, which may be of interest to our readers.

Truth about encounters

There is an excellent piece by Rajesh Kasturirangan at India Together on the truth about encounters. While I agree with him substantially that in practice the line between genuine and fake encounters is often blurred, there is need for laying down certain guidelines which would merit calling an encounter as genuine. Those encounters failing such a test must be labelled as fake, and treated as murder. In my view, therefore, the Parliament attack case merits being called as a genuine encounter, when all terrorists were killed. 26/11 also would fall under this category. This is not to suggest that only televised encounters deserve to be labelled as genuine. The Supreme Court is currently hearing on guidelines for encounters, in the case of People's Union of Liberties v. State of Maharashtra. The responses of the States and the Centre to some of the proposals by the petitioner in this case merit attention.

For those readers, who would like to know more about this case, my article published in 2009 may be of use. Manoj Mitta has written this piece on July 31.