Leading Right to Information (RTI) activist Amit Jethwa was shot dead opposite the high court building in Ahmedabad Tuesday night, police said. Jethwa had just come out after meeting his lawyer and was getting into his vehicle parked near the office of the state bar council, opposite the Gujarat High Court, when two unidentified people on a motor cycle fired a single shot at him. According to eyewitnesses, Jethwa, who...
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Communal violence bill: activists, government at loggerheads by Smita Gupta
From the framing of its first draft in 2005 to the heated debates that have followed it, the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill has been mired in controversy. The government feels that civil society organisations want to take over its powers; civil society organisations believe the government is simply not prepared to go far enough. Now, after five years of back and forth, the National Advisory Council...
More »Land acquisition for DFC: 118 farmers' objections rejected
The land acquisition officer of Vadodara district has rejected 118 objections to the acquisition of large number of farmers' lands in Vadodara city area and the district, sources said here today. They had made a representation to the officer, who is the competent authority, in the past for not acquiring their fertile lands for the Special Railway Project Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) in Vadodara district of Gujarat. Private agriculture lands of...
More »India’s underbelly exposed by Radhieka Pandeya
Mokhada, Maharashtra: In the last 15-16 years, Jhaluriben Baria has had eight children, two of whom died within five days of their birth. Her youngest child Heera Gopabhai Baria, a boy, is seven months old. The infant is ensconced in a plastic sack strung across two sticks at the entrance of their house in Panchyasan village in Devgadh Baria block of Dahod district, Gujarat. Playing alongside is his sister, Premilaben Baria....
More »The Green Mile by Saumya Tyagi
AS CONCERN for the ecosystem runs high all across the world, a small, mountainous state in India’s northeast — Sikkim, has taken a step ahead and declared to go completely organic by the year 2015. What this means is the total phasing out of chemical inputs from agriculture. Sikkim has long been an ecologically conscious state with initiatives such as a comprehensive ban on plastic, bio-medical and chemical waste in...
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