The parliamentary panel on food and agriculture has recommended against sugar decontrol, claiming the move will go against the interest of farmers as well as consumers. The views of this panel, expressed in a report tabled in the Parliament yesterday, are not binding. “The committee is of the opinion that if the entire control on manufacturing and distribution of sugar is removed, the PDS scheme will be adversely affected, as sugar...

A week after the Ministry of Environment and Forests threw the Vedanta Aluminium project in Orissa into doldrums by denying final stage forest clearance, the fate of the 12 million tonne per annum Steel project by Korean Steelmaker Posco appears to be bleak after the ministry widened the ambit of the Meena Gupta panel looking into the Steel project. In July this year, the MoEF had formed a four-member panel headed by...

An inter-ministerial meeting on infrastructure constraints ended up discussing the coal ministry’s accusations against the environment ministry of going slow in clearing mining projects that meet green norms. At the end of the meeting, the exasperated chairman of the group, a secretary from the cabinet secretariat, suggested the environment ministry should henceforth attend the meetings on infrastructure. The ministry should be present in the next meet and listen to the complaints...

The fact-finding team set up by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) last month to probe allegations of violations of the Forest Rights Act by Posco, the Korean Steel major, for its proposed project in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district, will visit the site on Friday and Saturday. The team is led by Meena Gupta, a former secretary of this ministry and also of the tribal affairs one. The other members...

The Government has asked the Meena Gupta panel to submit its report on POSCO's Steel plant in Orissa by the end of September, Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said on Tuesday. He also added that it is unfair to compare Vedanta's Niyamgiri bauxite mining project with POSCO's Rs540bn integrated Steel plant. According to the minister, no tribal rights issue is involved in the POSCO project. “The POSCO project involves issues of other forest...