“Entire public hearing was farce and makes mockery of public hearing process” In a significant decision the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday set aside the Environmental Clearance (EC) granted to the 4 MTPA Coal Mining Project of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) and 4 MTPA Coal Washery at Gare in Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh on grounds of faulty public hearing. The company had been granted environmental clearance in May 2009....

Anand Patwardhan’s paean to Dalits, that took 14 years to compose, probes even as it praises, says Saroj Giri THERE IS an entrenched tendency to represent Dalits fighting for rights and reservations as just (another) competitive bloc vying for self-interest and power. It leads to a pernicious inversion: ‘Dalit rights’ dividing the nation along caste lines. Victim as perpetrator! Anand Patwardhan’s film Jai Bhim Comrade takes us beyond the grid of...

The Supreme Court wanted to know today “what was happening” in the Orissa Maoist hostage crisis. The Centre told the court it had “no idea”, while the Orissa government — the primary respondent in a public interest petition seeking to prevent it from succumbing to the “blackmail tactics” of Maoists — was not represented. A Bench of Justices T S Thakur and Gyan Sudha Misra had posted an urgent hearing of...

The National Green Tribunal's decision to suspend the environmental clearance given to Posco vindicates the project's critics. ON March 30, the Principal Bench of the newly formed National Green Tribunal (NGT) delivered a momentous decision suspending the environmental clearance (EC) given to the South Korean transnational corporation, Posco, to set up an integrated steel plant at Paradip in Odisha's Jagatsinghpur district. The former Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam...

-The Hindu Expressing concern over the reported comments of the Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia that Right to Information queries were impeding the working of Judges, the Chief Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi had written to the CJI to lend his powerful voice to increasing the effectiveness and reach of RTI and not support those who seek to curb it. In a recent letter addressed to Mr. Justice Kapadia, the CIC drew...