-The Hindu A day after getting relief from the Madras High Court, environmental group Greenpeace India on Thursday withdrew its writ petition in the Delhi High Court challenging suspension of its registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) and freezing of five bank accounts. The Madras High Court had on Wednesday granted an interim stay for eight weeks on the Ministry of Home Affairs order of September 2 cancelling the non-government...
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PM Modi’s foreign travel: what we spent and what we got -Rukmini S & Samarth Bansal
-The Hindu Last week, a Delhi-based Right To Information (RTI) activist, Lokesh Batra, finally got responses to his request for information on the public funds spent on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official foreign trips between June 2014 and June 2015. Mr. Batra was forced to write separately to every Embassy and High Commission in each of the countries the Mr. Modi visited, and yet some denied him the information on the...
More »The gag on Greenpeace
-The Hindu For a while now, Greenpeace has been in the cross hairs of the government, first under the UPA and now under the BJP, as it championed civil liberties and causes. Its activists have been prevented from travelling abroad. The non-governmental organisation (NGO) stands accused of concealing and mixing foreign contributions with local contributions. The latest step by the Ministry of Home Affairs simply cancelling Greenpeace’s registration was but an...
More »Rules to bypass forest law for tribals in BJP-ruled states? -Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava
-Hindustan Times Several BJP-ruled states have brought rules and orders that could scuttle implementation of the forest rights act (FRA), reveal documents available with Hindustan Times. The 2006 law upholds consent of villagers to divert forestland for industrial projects, considered a stumbling block to the Union government’s push for industries. The three forest-rich states of Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, which are home to a sizeable tribal population, have come up with rules...
More »Socio Economic Caste Census: Has It Ignored Too Many Poor Households? -NC Saxena
-Economic and Political Weekly A survey to identify who the poor are and how many are actually poor is necessary if programmes and benefits targeted at the needy are to reach them. The Socio Economic Caste Census, of which partial results have been published, was intended to do this. Yet, even a cursory look at the figures indicates that they call for a willing suspension of disbelief. N C Saxena (naresh.saxena@gmail.com) was...
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