On August 22, 2017, as many as 19 AIADMK MLAs, owing allegiance to MLA T.T.V. Dinakaran, met Governor Vidayasagar Rao and handed over individual letters stating that they had lost confidence in Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami.  The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Speaker, P. Dhanapal, disqualified 18 of the 19 MLAs on September 18, 2017, following a complaint from the AIADMK party Whip. The 18 MLAs approached the Madras High Court seeking relief. They had pointed out that in an earlier case, Deputy Chief Minister, O. Panneerselvam, and 11 MLAs had voted against the government in the floor of the House, and the Speaker did not take any action against any of them. In this instance, they had not violated a party whip, and had not voted against the government. A two-judge Division Bench which heard the case, delivered a split verdict, and the 18MLAs approached the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court transferred the case to the 'tie-breaker' judge at the Madras High Court, who delivered a 475-page order on October 25, upholding the disqualfiication.   Justice M. Satyanarayanan's order upholding the disqualification of 18 MLAs [PDF 1.79 MB] Source: Supreme Court of India   The Madras High Court Division Bench order of June 14, 2018, which delivered a split verdict on the disqualification of 18 MLAs [PDF 1.64 MB] Source: Supreme Court of India     OPS MLAs disqualification judgement [PDF 346 KB] Source: Supreme Court of India  

In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court allowed entry of women of all ages into the Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala in Kerala.

On Juy 31, 2017, the Government of India appointed a 10-member Committee of Experts headed by Justice B.N. Srikrishna, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India "to identify key data protection issues in India and recommend methods of addressing them". The terms of reference of the Committee were to "to study various issues relating to data protection in India", and "to make specific suggestions for consideration of the Central Government on principles to be considered for data protection in India and suggest a draft data protection bill". In addition to Justice Srikrishna (Chairperson), the members of the Committee of Experts were: Mrs. Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Department of Telecom; Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO,Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI); Dr. Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY); Prof. Rajat Moona, Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Raipur; Dr. Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator; Prof. Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Director, Indian Institute of Management, Indore; Dr. Arghya Sengupta, Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy; Ms. Rama Vedashree, CEO, Data Security Council of India (DSCI);  and the Joint Secretary, MeitY (Member-Convener).   The full report of the Committee of Experts can be accessed at the following link: A Free and Fair Digital Economy, Protecting Privacy, Empowering Indians [PDF 1.72 MB] Source: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India   The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018, which is available on the website of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), can be accessed at the following link:   Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 [PDF 723 KB] Source: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India

The Union Ministry of Human Resources Development (HRD) plans to dissolve the University Grants Commission and replace it with a Higher Education Comm

The Government of India, on June 1, 2018, framed a scheme for the sharing of the Cauvery waters. An Extraordinary Gazette notified the establishment o

"The Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, has released the estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)