-The Indian Express The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR Act), was not passed in a hurry. It was passed 60 years too late, but nearly unanimously with the support of the BJP. The main purpose of the LARR Act was to repeal the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (the old Act). The old Act was an oppressive colonial law that gave unbridled powers...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The PMO appears to be backing the forest ministry's decision to allow diversion of forestland for linear projects in certain areas without seeking the gram sabha's approval, despite objections raised by the tribal affairs ministry. Although the tribal affairs ministry has strongly protested against the forest ministry's notification of October 28, 2014, on the ground that it violated the Forests Rights Act (FRA), its effort to issue a...

-Frontline SHUBHANKAR DAM, Assistant Professor of Law at Singapore Management University School of Law, is the author of Presidential Legislation in India: The Law and Practice of Ordinances (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which has received wide acclaim among scholars of constitutional law. Against the backdrop of his insightful critique on the necessity of ordinances in a democracy, Professor Dam discusses in this interview the recent controversy triggered by the Bharatiya Janata...

-The Indian Express It was an interesting discussion. The subject was the recent ordinance Promulgated by the government of Rajasthan banning men and women without a Class X certificate from contesting zila parishad and panchayat samiti elections. To contest at the sarpanch level, a candidate will need to have passed Class VIII (Class V in tribal areas). In this state, with a particularly poor record of literacy among women, tribals and...

The tribal or the Scheduled Tribe communities constitute only 8.6 percent of India's population and yet, they are around 40 percent of those displaced due to ‘development’ projects. In the midst of a raging debate on the new Land Acquisition Ordinance, a new report brings out many such paradoxes of development versus displacement of India’s indigenous or Adivasi people. The report exposes the anomalies of land alienation, displacement and forced...