By not resolving the definition of ‘public purpose,' the Land Acquisition Bill keeps the door open for misuse It has taken more than 110 years for the government to draft a new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill. But despite mounting evidence of widespread misuse of government authority in taking over farm land and the increasing protests against the legal ambiguity that abets such exploitative practices, the revised legislation remains dubiously...

-The Economic Times The government has no immediate plans to raise the retail prices of diesel, kerosene and cooking gas, Oil Minister S. Jaipal Reddy said on Monday. "I am not touching (the prices of) diesel, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) or kerosene," Reddy said, adding, no date has yet been fixed for a meeting of a ministerial panel to review the prices of the three subsidised fuels. State-owned oil fuel retailers announced an...

Eminent journalist Dileep Padgaonkar who headed the group of three Central interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir said on Thursday that the thrust of their report was to empower the people of Jammu and Kashmir so that they were able to exercise their civil and political rights in full measure. The 176-page report of the group of Central interlocutors was uploaded on the website of Union Home Ministry on Thursday, seven months...

-The Hindu A group of tribal workers of the Priyadarshini Tea Plantation, under the aegis of the Congress Vythiri Mandalam Committee, encroached on plantation land at Lakkidi on Sunday morning and erected huts demanding two acres of land for each tribal family and job opportunities for them. T. Nazar, president, Vythiri Mandalam Congress Committee, said the tribal workers in the Lakkidi unit of the plantation had been leading a wretched life since...

-The Telegraph A survey has identified 1,132 children in the age-group of 6 to 14 from eight districts as victims of seasonal migration who ended up working under woeful conditions in brick kilns outside Jharkhand. The study, conducted by city-based NGO Association for Social and Human Awareness (ASHA) and Tomorrow’s Foundation, Calcutta, covered 50 villages in Gumla, Lohardaga, Latehar, Ranchi, Khunti, East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum and Seraikela-Kharsawan. A glaring fact that emerged was...