The green bench of the Himachal Pradesh high court slapped a fine of Rs 100 crore on Jaiprakash Associates on Friday for setting up a cement plant fraudulently. The court quashed the environmental clearance granted to the company's thermal plant and directed that it be dismantled within three months. It also called for a special investigation team to be set up to see if state officials were involved. Disposing of...

Himachal Pradesh-based environmental organisations are elated over the recent High Court judgment against cement majors Jaiprakash Associates Limited for flouting environmental norms and illegally acquiring land for setting up their mega business ventures. Non-governmental organisation Him Parivesh that had filed the petition in the High Court had said: “The years of struggle of the communities and their stand against the Jaypee power project and cement plant has been vindicated by the...

-PTI Unhappy over Odisha's performance in implementing MGNREGA, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today asked the state government to sincerely utilise about Rs 5,000 crore central fund proposed for various rural schemes this year instead of complaining against the Centre. "It is a matter of regret that Odisha put up a poor show in implementing MGNREGA. Its performance is at the bottom after Bihar and Jharkhand though programmes like MGNREGA is...

A barbed wire fence put up on Government land dividing two different groups of Dalits for nearly a decade in Santhaiyur village near Peraiyur was removed by the Madurai Rural district police on Wednesday. A section of people belonging to one of the Scheduled Castes had erected stone pillars and fenced the poromboke land for about 30 feet with barbed wires to “prevent the people of other group entering the land...

COIMBATORE: The Tamil Nadu forest department's push to get Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary declared a tiger reserve suffered a setback on Wednesday when grama sabhas in all 19 tribal-majority Panchayats in the region passed separate resolutions against the move. The resolutions said the department had not consulted the local communities on the project, though Section 38 V of the Wildlife Protection Act makes it mandatory. The Wildlife Protection Act stipulates that approval from...