Central Empowered Committee has recommended cancellation of 49 leases The Karnataka Government has requested the Supreme Court to revoke the suspension of 117 mining leases listed under categories A and B by the Central Empowered Committee (CEC). The Supreme Court-appointed CEC has recommended cancellation of 49 mining leases listed under Category C, where iron ore was being mined illegally. It has recommended resumption of operations in 45 mining leases listed under Category...

-The Hindu   Fears expressed over misuse of Forest Rights Act Fearing that the Forest Rights Act, 2006, will be used as a populist programme leading to ineligible people benefitting from land grants, the Director-General of Forests has written to all Chief Secretaries of States to exercise restraint in granting land ownership records (pattas). Kaushik Mukherjee, Additional Chief Secretary to Government, Department of Forest, Ecology and Environment, said this at the national-level workshop on...

The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.  The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of...

A committee on social security, set up at the 44th Indian Labour Conference (ILC) that concluded its session here on Wednesday, has suggested that maternity leave to women employees, now provided under the Maternity Benefit Act, be raised to 24 weeks from the present 12 weeks. This has come even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while speaking at the conference on Tuesday, stressed the need to understand the constraints women staff...

Six months ago, a doctor was all set to make a killing by selling his posh bungalow 'Chaitanya' near Crescent Circle to a Muslim family. As soon as the news spread, a group representing the saffron brigade reached his house and tried persuading him to call off the deal. When the doctor did not agree, the group held a sit-in outside his house and started chanting Ram Dhun. The agitators...