The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has called for a 24-hour strike on Wednesday after the lower house of India’s parliament approved the National Medical Commission (NMC) bill on Tuesday. It was passed by a voice vote, amid a walkout by opposition political parties such as the Indian National Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the [...]

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Monday formed a bench to determine the exact duration of a sentence of imprisonment for life under the country’s law. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khosa took notice of the issue while hearing a petition to reduce a convict’s life sentence. The bench set to [...]

The upper house of India’s parliament approved a bill on Thursday to amend the Right to Information Act of 2005. The bill has already been passed by the lower house of parliament and will become law once it receives presidential assent. Amendments to the law proposed in the bill include changes to the fixed term [...]

India’s federal government on Tuesday introduced two new labor code bills in the lower house of parliament. The Code on Wages and the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions are expected to affect about 500 million workers if passed. The Code on Wages seeks to regulate wage and bonus payments in all places [...]

The Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India’s parliament, approved a bill on Monday to amend the Protection of Human Rights Act of 1993. The bill was passed by the lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha) last week and will become law once it receives presidential assent. The bill was introduced to include, among other [...]

India’s Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, passed a bill on Monday to amend a statute that delineates the powers of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the country’s federal anti-terrorism investigation agency. It will become law once it is passed by the upper house of parliament (Rajya Sabha) and receives presidential assent. In its [...]

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided the homes and offices of two senior human rights lawyers, Anand Grover, and Indira Jaising, on Thursday in an investigation into allegations of illegally receiving and misusing foreign funds for their NGO. The raids prompted criticism they were being targeted for political reasons. Federal officers conducted searches relating [...]

The Supreme Court of India on Monday rejected a plea for Muslim women to be allowed entry into mosques in the country. A regional head of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, a far-right political organization, had filed the public interest litigation petition. The petitioner had also sought the abolition of the “purdah system,” or the [...]

Officials in India’s Supreme Court registry said on Wednesday that the court would make its judgments available in regional languages on its official website by the end of July. Initially, court decisions will be translated into Assamese, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu. The move aims to satisfy a long-standing demand of non-English speakers in the [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Sunday called on the government of Sri Lanka to halt plans to resume executions and restore its 43-year moratorium on the use of the death penalty. “Sri Lanka’s plan to resume use of the death penalty is a major setback for human rights. Sri Lanka has been a bulwark against [...]