-The Hindu   Orissa High Court today issued notices to the State and Central governments and Posco India on a PIL alleging illegal forest clearance granted in favour of the company for a steel plant in Jagatsinghpur district. A division bench of Chief Justice V Gopal Gowda and Justice B N Mohapatra of the HC issued the notices after preliminary hearing on a PIL and adjourned the matter to be heard again...

Environmentalist Ashish Kothari was a member of the Inter-Ministerial Committee (constituted by Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) and Ministry of Tribal Affairs) to review the implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA). The committee, headed by Dr N C Saxena submitted its report recently to the Central government. During the course of its work the committee visited Odisha to assess the performance of the FRA there, particularly in the...

The long search for an effective system to target subsidies on food, fertiliser and fuel has finally ended with the Planning Commission accepting the idea of an Aadhaar-based rechargeable smart card. Ideas like direct cash transfers and food stamps have been rejected in favour of the Aadhaar smart card. The new proposal can help target the food subsidy with the tamper-proof biometric cards – Aadhaar unique identity cards – being...

Tihar jail today has the largest collection of charged or convicted top officials, a powerful ex-minister, sundry politicians and officials. Maharashtra had a teflon-coated chief minister who was ‘sacked’ to a cabinet post in Delhi after being long untouched by many scandals. Another just exited. A former Jharkhand chief minister is in jail on charges of looting his state treasury and accumulating funds abroad. The powerful founder of the Nationalist...

The state government has started deploying security personnel in the Posco project area, anticipating a showdown with activists against land acquisition for the South Korean steel company. The state government would restart land acquisition for the proposed project in Jagatsinghpur district from May 18, chairman and managing director of Orissa Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation, Priyabrata Patnaik, said on Saturday. The Centre has already given its approval for the diversion of forest land...