Though people oppose refinery expansion, officials record their statements as favourable for project The official record of the public hearing on the Vedanta Aluminium’s plan to expand its refinery in the foothills of Orissa’s Niyamgiri Hills seems to contradict itself. While the people said “no” to the project, the officials recording their statements concluded with a “yes”. The public hearing, held on April 25, 2009, contributed to the decision of several...
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China, India adding to e-waste timebomb: UN
Mountains of discarded computers and mobile phones could soon pose serious threats to public health and the environment in developing countries without swift action, the UN said on Monday. “Sales of electronic products in countries like China and India and across continents such as Africa and Latin America are set to rise sharply in the next 10 years,” the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report. “And unless action...
More »Bt safe than sorry
By putting an open-ended moratorium on the commercial cultivation of the gene-altered Bt brinjal, environment minister Jairam Ramesh has ended the long-pending uncertainty over this issue. If, despite nine years of testing and safety trials to the satisfaction of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), some genuine concerns about the safety aspects of transgenic Bt brinjal have still been left unaddressed, they surely need to be addressed before the country’s...
More »No curb on number of rickshaws: HC by Utkarsh Anand
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday ruled that there could be no curb on the number of licences issued to cycle-rickshaw pullers as it would be against their right to earn livelihood and also hamper the “invaluable” linkage provided by rickshaws. The Bench headed by Chief Justice A P Shah and comprising Justices S Ravindra Bhat and S Muralidhar also took exception to the by-law authorising the police, the Municipal...
More »Rs 1 lakh crore budget funds go unspent each year by Pradeep Thakur
While the government is grappling with a huge fiscal deficit and hence large borrowings to fund key social sector schemes, staggering sums of up to Rs 1 lakh crore in a year out of the money allocated to various ministries remained unspent between 2005-06 and 2007-08. Unspent provisions of Rs 100 crore each or more alone totalled Rs 59,000 crore in these years, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General....
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