Indian politician Mahua Moitra was expelled from the lower house of the Parliament, known as the Lok Sabha, for indulging in “unethical conduct” and committing “serious misdemeanours” following a recommendation by the Ethics Committee. Moitra belongs to the opposition party, Trinamool Congress, headed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee. The Ethics Committee Report accused [...]

The Lower House of the Indian Parliament, known as the Lok Sabha, passed two bills on Wednesday aimed at introducing and implementing reservations for members of schedule castes, tribes, socially and educationally “backward” classes within the legislative assembly, employment sphere and professional institutions within the territories of Jammu and Kashmir. Reservations in India are a [...]

India’s Home Ministry on Monday extended a ban against seven Meitei extremist groups that advocate the secession of Manipur, a small state in northeastern India. The ministry, through a notification, listed the seven organizations: the Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) and its political wing, the Revolutionary Peoples’ Front (RPF); the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) and [...]

India’s government on Friday invited feedback and comments on the Draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023, which was introduced on the same day to modernize the regulatory framework for broadcasting services, including Over-the-Top(OTT) content.  Releasing the draft bill, the Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur wrote: This pivotal legislation modernizes our broadcasting sector’s regulatory framework, [...]

Human Rights Watch stated on Wednesday that Burkina Faso’s junta is intensifying its assault on dissent by notifying 12 journalists, civil society activists and opposition party members that they were required to participate in government security operations across the country. The interim military authorities in Burkina Faso claim that the conscription orders are justified under [...]

Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), on Friday, said that Pakistan’s plan to deport the “undocumented” remaining foreign nationals in the country after November 1 should be suspended as it disproportionately impacts more than a million undocumented Afghans who will remain in Pakistan post the final deadline. [...]

Pakistan Interim Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti issued a warning Thursday to “illegal immigrants” living in Pakistan to voluntarily leave the country by November 1 or risk potential arrest and deportation. Bugti said that the government has data about all those residing in the country without legal documentation, including several from neighboring Afghanistan and they must [...]

The India Supreme Court on Tuesday held that there is no fundamental right for same-sex couples to get married. A five-judge bench of the court, headed by the Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud, ruled against recognizing same-sex marriages, as well as civil unions for non-heterosexual couples in India in a 3-2 verdict. Earlier [...]

A family court in Japan declared it unconstitutional to require an individual to undergo gender-affirming surgery to obtain identification in line with their gender. The Shizuoka Family Court in Central Japan struck down the law, previously upheld as constitutional by Japan’s Supreme Court in 2019, last week. The Thursday verdict, which has been widely celebrated [...]

The Indian government introduced legislation on Tuesday that would allocate a third of of the seats in the lower house of Parliament and state legislative assemblies to women. Minister of Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal introduced the The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023, also known as the Women’s Reservation Bill, in [...]