-The Times of India NEW DELHI: About a quarter of India's districts are witnessing mass protests over land acquisition issues according to a study. It identified 252 land conflicts spread over 165 districts, spanning practically all states of the country, in 2013-14. This is an increase of over 40% over 2012 when an earlier study had recorded 177 disputes in 130 districts. This incendiary situation is the reason behind the bitter debate...

-The Telegraph Shillong: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) today allowed transportation of coal from Meghalaya while refusing to lift the interim ban on the mining of the "black diamond". After a series of hearings, the tribunal's principal bench provided partial relief to coal miners by permitting them to pay royalty on the extracted coal within 21 days from today. Transportation of the mineral would carry on until May 31, the bench ruled. "The...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: The Naveen Patnaik government has sought the corporate sector's help to finance its new Aahaar (food) scheme, under which rice and dalma would be served to people at lunchtime for Rs 5. The scheme would be launched on April 1, coinciding with the 79th foundation day of the state, in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Sambalpur and Rourkela. It would cater to 25,000 people every day. In Bhubaneswar, the subsidised food will...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Thursday quashed the lookout circular issued against Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai. The high court also directed the authorities to expunge endorsements made while offloading Pillai from a flight to London by immigration officials on January 11. The court had reserved the order in the case on February 19. Pillai had objected to the government's move of offloading her when she was on her...

Quite opposite to the top-down model of budgeting, the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party-led Government in Delhi has decided to go for a 'citizen-centric' budget planning at 'mohalla'-level for the fiscal year 2015-16. Drawing lessons from the success stories of participatory budgeting conducted at municipal-level in cities like Porto Alegre (Brazil), the AAP-led Delhi Government has decided to launch this form of decentralized budgeting on a pilot basis in a...