As the tribal heartland seethes with anger over displacement and Naxalism, the PM has formed an apex advisory body of Centre and states to guide policies affecting the ethnic population. The Centre has formed a ' National Council for Tribal Welfare' to provide policy guidelines across the board. It will comprise key central ministries with a bearing on tribal lives and chief ministers of schedule V and VI states. It...

Slain Gujarat—based RTI activist Amit Jethwa has been chosen for a gallantry award instituted by a voluntary organisation working in the field of transparency. The organisation, National RTI Forum, has instituted several gallantry awards for RTI activists who have dared the adversities to get information from government on the issues concerning larger public interest and exposing corruption in the process. Jethwa will be given the ‘Satish Shetty Award for Gallantry’ posthumously. The ‘Lalit...

The environment ministry has issued environmental violation notice to Anil Agarwal-promoted Vedanta Alumina’s Lanjigarh refinery. Violations include failure to adhere to environment protection norms, unauthorised expansion of capacity to 6 million tonnes and sourcing of bauxite from illegal mines. The company has time till September 14 to submit its reply. An unsatisfactory explanation could result in the refinery’s closure. The ministry had, last week, rejected Vedanta’s $1.7 billion bauxite mining...

11 of its source mines did not have a valid clearance One week after Vedanta Aluminium's application to mine bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa was rejected, its refinery expansion project has been slapped with a show-cause notice by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests. The company was taken to task for allegedly going ahead with a six-fold expansion of its refinery in Lanjigarh even as the Ministry was still...

Long before they gained currency as the real-life counterparts of the Na'vis portrayed by Hollywood blockbuster "Avatar", the author of the Vedanta verdict — Justice S H Kapadia — had made clear about how he saw the Dongaria Kondhs, who are officially classified as "primitive tribal group". Kapadia, now chief justice of India, described this tribe from Orissa as a people "living on grass". His unflattering, almost dismissive description came...