The Supreme Court on May 7 ruled that natural resources were national assets that belonged to the people and were ideally exploited by public sector undertakings. This obviously implies that local communities, including tribals, living on mineralised land, enjoy entitlements but not prescriptive ownership rights to such national assets. This is an important reiterative clarification defining mineral rights in Fifth Schedule areas that are currently in contention. Whether PSUs should...

The US on Tuesday rejected taking any action against the Union Carbide company for the world's worst industrial disaster that had left over 15,000 people dead and hoped the Indian court verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy case would bring "closure to the victims". "With respect to Bhopal, obviously that was one of the greatest industrial tragedies and industrial accidents in human history. And let me just say that we...

A Tripuri woman was beaten up and paraded naked through her village by panchayat members in Dhalai after a kangaroo court accused her of sexual misconduct last Saturday. The 30-year-old wife of a farmer, villagers said, “were spoiling young boys with sexual bait” in Jayanti Bazar village. Last Saturday, when the mother of two was feeding her children around 12pm, panchayat member Bangalaxmi Debbarma came to her house and asked her to...

A series of shots rang out in the night far beyond the barricaded perimeter of the Central Reserve Police Force camp here in Chhattisgarh?s Dantewada district. For a few minutes, the sentries on duty returned fire before their guns, and the ones that sounded in the distance, fell silent. By morning, the adivasi settlements around the camp had emptied, the villagers wary of being caught and questioned by the CRPF?s morning...

"It is wrong to say that we will become a super cabinet. We are here to get the Indian bureaucracy to see reason to carry forward social projects related to areas like health, food, agriculture speedily and make sure that people like (Planning Commission deputy chairman) Montek Singh Ahluwalia gets the correct picture and figures on social issues," a member of the National Advisory Council told rediff.com. The member argued...