The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council will meet on Friday for the second time this month. It will consider a number of issues, including the Rangarajan panel’s recommendations on the draft Food Security Bill. The high-profile policy advisory body, headed by the United Progressive Alliance chairperson , may formulate its response to the governmentappointed Rangarajan panel’s recommendations, which were seen as diluting the NAC’s vision of the scope of legally binding...

The Environment Ministry today released a paper by a senior Indian space scientist that highlights the role of cosmic rays in global warming and attempts to rekindle a 13-year debate on natural factors heating the planet. The scientific review, by Udupi Ramachandra Rao, a cosmic ray physicist and former head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), also claims the UN climate change agency overestimated the role of greenhouse gases on...

Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh said he’d set up an advisory council with participation of industry to look into policy issues regarding environment clearances. The council, to meet once in three months, will examine suggestions on changes required in policy for faster environment and forest clearance. In an interaction yesterday with the Confederation of Indian Industry, he also endorsed the view that all projects related to natural resource extraction should be...

NC Saxena , the influential former bureaucrat who is a member of the National Advisory Council, has raised the ineffectiveness of government programmes among tribal people in a paper that will come up for discussion before the Sonia-Gandhi headed council. The government relied on a report by Saxena last year in denying clearance to a large mining project by Vedanta Resources in Orissa’s Niyamgiri hills . This had attracted international...

To avoid a clash with the Union Environment and Forest Ministry over environmental clearance for coal projects, the Coal Ministry has sought permission for mining on the land which is not under dense forest and wildlife corridor. A proposal to this effect has been submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, by Union Minister of State for Coal Sriprakash Jaiswal. It is against the backdrop of increasing coal production that permission has...