A fresh public interest litigation (PIL) was filed in the Supreme Court on Friday challenging the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s civil nuclear power programme. The PIL, filed by lawyer Prashant Bhushan on behalf of many former public officials and eminent citizens, makes several demands of the Supreme Court, but most significantly asks it to cancel “clearances given to proposed nuclear power plants and staying all proposed nuclear power plants” till satisfactory...

-The Hindu   “My government will respect people's views on the issue” Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Thursday assured the people living in the vicinity of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project that her government would act in such a manner as to respect their views on the issue. “I will be one among you on this issue,” she said, addressing a campaign meeting for the local bodies elections here. Later answering questions from journalists...

-IANS   Activists continued to protest outside Tamil Nadu's Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) Friday, preventing employees of the plant from going inside to work.  For the past six days, 106 people have been on fast demanding scrapping of the nuclear power project. The relay fast is being held at Idinthakarai village near Kudankulam in the district, around 650 km from here.  Villagers have surrounded all the entry points to KNPP.  Around 25 employees, forming...

-The Hindu   The former Director-General of Police of Gujarat, Julio Francis Ribeiro, on Thursday condemned the arrest of suspended Gujarat cadre IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who took on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his alleged role in the 2002 post-Godhra riots. “I condemn the action of the Modi government arresting him and doing something unconscionable which is not within the limits of morality,” Mr. Ribeiro told a press conference organised by...

The Union government is inclined to examine specific requirements of States individually while implementing the proposed legislation on food security. When it was brought to his attention that crores of people in the State would be left out of the Public Distribution System as the ceiling for coverage of urban population stipulated in the draft National Food Security Bill was 50 per cent and the provisional figures of Census 2011 pointed...