Arundhati Roy’s hilltop bungalow in a protected forest area will be demolished, a Madhya Pradesh revenue court ruled today upholding a lower court’s judgment that the land was acquired illegally. The bungalow at Bariyam village in Panchmarhi, 250km southeast of Bhopal, stands on a 4,346sqft plot that the author’s husband, filmmaker Pradeep Kishan, had bought in 1994. In an eight-page verdict, Bhopal-Hoshangabad division commissioner Manoj Srivastava rejected the petitioners’ plea of ignorance...

The Jaitapur nuclear power project has drawn blood even before its boundary wall is ready. One person was killed in police firing on Monday, which by all accounts was unnecessary to disperse peaceful protesters. There was arson in Madban, at the site’s centre, which gutted some grass and a part of a tiny makeshift shed belonging to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India. The police went berserk and intruded into...

As Madhya Pradesh begins to harvest a bumper wheat crop, the state is finding that measures put in place to ensure that the powerful do not game the system are having the unintended effect of keeping out the most marginalised. In anticipation of a bumper harvest, the MP government announced a Rs 100 bonus that it would pay wheat farmers above the central government-fixed Minimum Support Price of Rs 1,120. "It...

Fresh allegations were made against the Bhushans on Wednesday after they declared their assets. Media reports are now alleging that Bhushans were allotted land by the Mayawati government. The allegations come even while Shanti Bhushan's son Jayant Bhushan was fighting a case against the UP govt and a case of conflict of interest is being made, according to Times Now. According to reports, the Bhushans didn't declare that a farmhouse given to...

The political class may be evil and corrupt but that’s whom Shanti Bhushan and his son Jayant Bhushan turn to when they want a farmhouse each — for a song. In his declaration of assets last week, Shanti Bhushan, also co-chairman of the drafting committee of the Lokpal Bill, mentioned a 10,000 sq m farmland plot in Noida. What he did not mention was the discretionary manner in which the Mayawati government,...