The April 10 elections to the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council have been postponed, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma announced. This came a day after two persons were killed in suspected police firing in the West Garo Hills district amid clashes between tribal and non-tribal groups.

Ethnic faultline widened after the council issued a notification barring non-tribal persons from contesting the polls scheduled to take place on April 10. Protests erupted on Monday, when the nomination process began, against non-tribal persons being allowed to contest the polls.

On Wednesday, the Meghalaya High Court set aside the notification that made a Scheduled Tribe certificate mandatory to contest the polls. Read on.

The Supreme Court directed the Centre and state governments to ensure that three experts who were involved in drafting a chapter about “corruption in the judiciary” in a now-withdrawn textbook are not associated with other curriculum projects.

An affidavit by the National Council of Educational Research and Training said that visiting Professor Michel Danino had supervised the drafting of the chapter, and educator Suparna Diwakar and legal researcher Alok Prasanna Kumar were also involved in the process.

The court said that either the three did not have “reasonable knowledge about the Indian judiciary”, or they knowingly misrepresented facts. The bench directed the Union government, states and universities “to dissociate three of them forthwith and not to assign any responsibility which involves public funds”. Read on.

The Supreme Court allowed life support to be withdrawn for a 31-year-old man who has been in a permanent vegetative state since 2013. This was the first instance in which the court’s directions on passive euthanasia, laid down in a 2018 judgement, have been applied.

The bench passed the order on a plea filed by the family of Harish Rana, who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in August 2013 after falling from the fourth floor of a building in Chandigarh. Rana’s family had approached the court seeking permission to withdraw life-sustaining treatment.

The court also recommended that the Union government bring in comprehensive legislation on passive euthanasia. Read on.

The Assam government will rename the Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Medical College and Hospital as the Barpeta Medical College and Hospital, dropping the name of the fifth president. Ahmed is the only person from the state to have held the post.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the decision was taken because all other government medical colleges in the state “were named in relation to the geographical entities”. He said that because the college was named after Ahmed, people would mistakenly believe that the institute was a private institute.

Sarma added that the Cabinet has decided to name another institution “befitting the stature” of Ahmed. Read on.

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