-The Times of India   Lavasa, touted as India's first planned hill city, suffered a setback on Friday. The Union environment and forests ministry refused to grant Lavasa, being built near Pune, a green clearance till the Maharashtra government takes action against the project for its existing violations. The company cannot continue construction work till it gets the clearance. The ministry's order is bound to delay the project for a while, if not...

On September 18 an earthquake of the magnitude of 6.8 by the Richter scale struck Sikkim at about 6.18 pm The epicentre of the quake was located about 67 kms north-west of Gangtok—the State capital. The epicenter was located to be precise at Mangan, the headquarter, of the Sikkim North district. There were about four-to-five aftershocks of lesser intensity within five-to-six hours. Minor tremors were felt even after a few...

-The Indian Express   Taking a tough stand on rampant plagiarism in the preparation of Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) reports, the Environment Ministry has decided to scrap any project whose impact-assessment report is found to be a “copy-paste” job from other reports. EIA reports are a must to get mandatory ‘green clearances’ for projects. Project Developers, which are mostly private firms, hire independent environmental consultants for the job. The decision to scrap such...

-The Indian Express   The Supreme Court has said that it amounts to “fraud” on the part of the government to forcibly acquire land under the guise of a public purpose, only to have the property transferred to real estate Developers or companies for their use.   A Bench of Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhyaya held that the State cannot use its power to compulsorily purchase or acquire land of a...

The government is mulling a raft of incentives for special economic zone Developers to encourage them to move away from urban centres and focus on economically backward regions. A senior official in the commerce ministry said SEZ Developers might get wider tax concessions if they build economic hubs in underdeveloped areas. The government may also lower the minimum area ceiling to ease land acquisition by them, the official said. These incentives...