-The Telegraph New Delhi: A group of ministers led by Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday deliberated on the recommendations that a panel had submitted last week as part of efforts to check lynchings following a Supreme Court prod to end such "acts of mobocracy". Among the suggestions that the panel, headed by Union home secretary Rajiv Gauba, had come up with was tightening of existing laws and action against India...

-Livemint.com Ecologist Madhav Gadgil, whose report on Western Ghats was rejected by the Kerala government, on what caused the Kerala floods and how the rebuilding process should be carried out Ernakulam (Kerala): Submitted seven years ago on 31 August 2011, ecologist Madhav Gadgil’s report on the biodiverse Western Ghats—a portion of which falls in Kerala—had warned that the combination of massive ecological destruction and extreme weather events trigger disaster. His words proved...

-The Hindu There should be space for greater storage of water in reservoirs before the onset of monsoon In the aftermath of any tragedy, people struggle to comprehend what happened and how to cope. Kerala is no different. With the floodwaters finally receding, a number of experts and politicians have stated various possible reasons for the tragedy. Some have cited ill-thought-out development plans that have affected the sustainability of the Western Ghats,...

-The Hindu Business Line The rejection of the the Gadgil panel report, by all the six States along the Western Ghats, has proved to be a costly error The floods of catastrophic dimensions that ravaged Kerala recently have brought into sharp focus the all-round ecological destruction caused by human interference in the State’s hilly terrains. The fact that there were 12 major landslides and hundreds of minor ones within a fortnight in the...

-The Hindu Business Line After Allahabad HC rebuff, Power firms look for govt lifeline Mumbai: About 70 companies with a combined debt of approximately ?3.6-lakh crore face insolvency proceedings, with the deadline imposed by the Reserve Bank of India ending on Monday. These companies did not get any legal relief as the Allahabad High Court declined to stay the RBI’s February circular instructing banks to take all large accounts above ?2,000 crore...