-The Financial Express Veerappa Moily says environment will be protected but won't be biased against industry. After Posco and Tawang, environment minister M Veerappa Moily has cleared the state-owned NHPC's 520 MW Teesta-IV hydro-electric project in Sikkim, thus having approved three big projects in three days, which were stuck despite having clearances from all other statutory and related bodies. Veerappa Moily, who approved the Teesta project on January 9, said at the Express...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: The state government today reacted sharply to the Centre's decision to reject Vedanta's plan to mine bauxite from the Niyamgiri hills in Kalahandi district. Mining of bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills was to be carried out by the state-owned Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) and Sterlite Industries Limited, a Vedanta group subsidiary. Steel and mines minister Rajanikant Singh said: "It is really unfortunate. The UPA government is not serious about the...

-The Hindu     Environment Ministry rejects Vedanta's plan to mine Niyamgiri The Union Environment Ministry has taken a decision in two high profile cases, rejecting the forest clearance for Vedanta's bauxite mining project in Niyamgiri Hills of Odisha, and renewing the stand-alone environmental clearance for Posco's eight million tonnes per annum steel plant. The rejection of Vedanta's proposal to dig in the Niyamgiri hills came after 12 village councils of Dongriya Kondh tribal groups...

-PTI     It could have been done in a more refined manner, it says The Centre on Thursday admitted before the Supreme Court that something went wrong with the coal blocks allocation and that it could have been done in a more refined manner. "We took the decision in good faith but something turned out to be wrong," Attorney-General Goolam E. Vahanvati told a three-judge Bench headed by Justice R.M. Lodha. "In hindsight, we can...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The comptroller and auditor general (CAG) is finalizing a report on yet another instance of massive loss to the state exchequer because of favours shown to private parties by the political establishment. The CAG's audit report on the Taj Expressway project could also find place among India's biggest scams, with successive Uttar Pradesh governments being accused of causing loss of thousands of crores to the...