-The Telegraph Tata Motors has “abandoned” the Singur project, according to the draft of a state government bill that seeks to take over the entire land leased out to the company and prospective vendors. If the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill, 2011, gets passed in the Assembly without any changes to the draft, it will be a matter of official record that the project has “in fact been abandoned by the...

Farmers of Gorakhpur and adjoining villages are divided over the issue of the Haryana government acquiring 1,500 acres of prime agricultural land for the 2,800 mw nuclear project, the first in the state. While most senior farmers are on relay dharna for several months taking a maximalist position of not giving their land away, the younger ones have formed their own samiti setting down outlandish, even if negotiable, demands in...

-PTI   The Communist Party of India (CPI) national secretary, D Raja, today demanded that the Odisha government should shift Posco steel plant from its current location."Even hough the locals, and particularly tribals, have been agitating against the plant since last six years, the Odisha government never listened to them," Raja said, adding that the state government was mercilessly using the police to suppress the people's movement."I urge the government to...

When it was almost certain that the governments of the country were to take their hands off from total acquisition of land for a private project, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has started thinking otherwise. The thought went out for hundred per cent acquisition by the government. Had this come at the germinal stage of discussion about changes in the colonial Act, it could have resulted in Mamata Banerjee’s face...

Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study. Researchers say foreign investors are profiting from "land grabs" that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, and can lead to environmental...