Over the last one year, villagers of Ghati in Gadchiroli have kept timber out of the Forest department’s reach, saying it belongs to them under the provisions of the FRA, short for Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest-Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act. The FRA recognises their rights only on non-timber minor Forest produce but the villagers have interpreted it to include all trees. They say minor Forest produces like mahua,...

-The Hindu   Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has refused to issue Forest clearance to the Mahan coal block in the Singrauli field of Madhya Pradesh, meant for the use of Essar and Hindalco power plants. However, this is not the final rejection. Instead, Mr. Ramesh has merely washed his hands of on the issue and passed the buck to a Group of Ministers to take a final decision. However, he has recommended that...

-The Times of India   Maoist-affected districts across the country might have seen years of neglect by successive governments, but a new Central scheme - Integrated Action Plan (IAP) - under the UPA-II is fast filling up the 'critical gap' in those 'deficit zones' through taking up a number of development projects. As many as 67,072 basic infrastructure projects across 60 districts in nine states have been taken up at Rs 2,740...

The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has decided to take action against Chirayu Medical College and Hospital, a private medical college in Madhya Pradesh set up inside the catchment area of the historic Upper Lake of Bhopal. In a letter to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan last month, a copy of which is withThe Hindu, Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh informed Mr. Chauhan that since the project had violated...

The Supreme Court order against the Salwa Judum’s vigilantism in Chhattisgarh must be read by all, especially government officials. The details of the civil war in the tribal districts of Chhattisgarh are largely unknown to most readers of this newspaper. For the region is remote and inaccessible, and easily ignored by the national media.   This civil war pits, on the one side, Maoist extremists, and, on the other, a band of...