His ministry had earlier put a stop on the project citing ecological damage Delhi Govt. insisted that only the dam can solve Capital's water woes Union Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said he will undertake an inspection of the Nahan Valley in Himachal Pradesh, the site of the proposed Renuka Dam, which has been turned down by his office on the grounds that it involves the axing of 1.77...

More than a hundred officials from various government and non government agencies observed a minute’s silence to pay tribute to slain Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGREGS) activist Niyamat Ansari at a consultation session organised by Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) to discuss the challenges facing the scheme and its future today. Deputy chief minister Hemant Soren, who was the chief guest on the occasion, faced a Barrage of...

The Orissa government has to give an assurance that not a single person is entitled to benefits under the Forest Rights Act, according to one of the conditions set by the Union environment ministry while giving provisional clearance to the Posco project today. The condition has been imposed following allegations that claims under the Forest Rights Act had not been settled. The act deals with dependants on forests for livelihood. The project,...

At the Cancun climate change conference in December 2010, Jairam Ramesh, Union minister for environment and forests, raised the white flag of surrender when, departing from the prepared text, he declared, “all countries, we believe, must take on binding commitments under appropriate legal forms”. The minister thus signalled that India will give in to pressures from developed countries to convert its voluntary, nationally-determined mitigation actions into internationally-binding commitments in an...

The ambitious Polavaram project, the multi-purpose project proposed across the Godavari for making optimum utilisation of water going waste into the sea, is mired in problems. The much-talked about project, aimed at stabilising the century-old Krishna delta and irrigating over 7 lakh acres in the upland areas of East and West Godavari districts, is dogged by uncertainty since it became a bone of contention between different regions and faced with litigation....