-Farmlandgrab.org Oxfam’s Phil Bloomer reports on the shocking scandal of (mostly) secretive land-grabbing, usually from those least able to defend their rights Land grabbing has fast become a major threat to poor communities in Africa, Asia and South America. Poverty-stricken women and men are being driven from their homes and the land they rely on to grow food to eat and make a living, usually without compensation. In many cases this is...

-Outlook The Supreme Court has said its Constitution bench's landmark judgement of 1980 on criterion for imposing death penalty needs a "fresh look" as there has been "no uniformity" in following its principles on what constitutes "the rarest of rare" cases. "This court has not endorsed the approach of aggravating and mitigating circumstances in Bachan Singh (case). However, this approach has been adopted in several decisions. This needs a fresh look. In...

-The Business Standard No full stops for forcible acquisition, poor compensation Lawmakers have been tinkering with a new land acquisition regime for a cynically long number of years. However, there is no change at the ground level. The news that a displaced woman in Madhya Pradesh immolated herself last week, starting a Chita (funeral pyre) satyagraha, was buried below the fold in the last page of newspapers. Meanwhile, more and more gross...

-Outlook Ghaziabad: Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary Neera Yadav and another IAS officer Rajiv Kumar were today sentenced to three-year imprisonment by a special CBI court here in the Noida plot allotment scam. CBI special judge S Lal also imposed a fine of Rs one lakh each on Yadav and Kumar. Yadav, a 1971 batch IAS officer, was the Chief Executive Officer of Noida in 1995 when she violated norms in allotting a...

-NDTV Bhopal: Twenty farmers in Bujbuja village of Katni district in Madhya Pradesh sit every day on funeral pyres, with kerosene and match sticks at arm's reach. This is a relay protest against acquisition of land by the government for a thermal power plant in the area.   On Diwali, a woman called Sunia Bai, allegedly set herself on fire after she was threatened by the authorities to give up her land. The...