Two days after the government scrapped a bauxite mining project in Orissa, Rahul Gandhi visited Niyamgiri, the ground zero of the anti-mine protests and told tribals that he was their sipahi in Delhi. Around the same time, farmers in Uttar Pradesh said they wouldn’t sell their land at the rates the government was offering. India is growing fast, but hassles over the acquisition of land are going to be the...

Amid a furore over 26 per cent profit-sharing with locals under the proposed new mining law and demands for watering down the provision for PSUs, the Mines Ministry today said its final draft will go with the recommendations of the Group of Ministers. "Based on the discussion of the Group of Ministers (GoM), the final draft of the new mining bill is being prepared by the Mines Ministry and will be...

The Supreme Court today held that any Land Acquisition depriving farmers of their “land, livelihood and way of life” without following due process was akin to “state-sponsored terrorism”. Slamming the Uttar Pradesh government’s Land Acquisition process, a two-judge bench headed by Justice G.S. Singhvi observed: “Throwing out villagers from their land and taking away their livelihood and way of life is state-sponsored terrorism.” The top court was hearing an appeal by some...

Demanding a uniform guideline for acquisition of their land, a farmers' convention on Sunday accused the government of failing in providing an appropriate policy to get peasants out of debt-trap. "It is the government which is responsible for suicides by farmers due to debt... successive governments have miserably failed in framing a proper policy to favour peasants," All India Kisan Coordination Committee chief and former MP Bhupinder Singh Mann said...

Stating that Singur and Nandigram have taught lessons to the West Bengal government, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today demanded from the Centre a new legislation in place of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. "We have learnt a few lessons from Singur and Nandigram. We must have a new legislation as the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 is out of sync," Bhattacharjee said. "We want a new law which will have issues like...