-The Hindu In her article in The Hindu, (“Nailing the lie of the land,” Op-Ed, August 23, 2012), Ms Medha Patkar has forcefully and with reason argued against the devastating consequences of land acquisition. Without getting into the concerns raised with regard to the larger “development model” we would like to respond to the issues she has raised with the proposed Bill on Land Acquisition which seem predicated on an understanding...

-The Hindu The response to my article by Mr. Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister for Rural Development, and his colleagues is a welcome move towards a public debate which we have suggested, time and again, should be held in every State with all people’s organisations. I would like to briefly reply to some points in the Minister’s response: His argument that land is finite cannot be used to justify forcible acquisition. The Bill...

-The Hindu A controversial Bill on land acquisition and the compensation and rehabilitation of those whose land is sought to be acquired ran into opposition in the Cabinet on Tuesday, resulting in referral to a Group of Ministers (GoM). Last week, the Cabinet deferred discussion on the newly renamed Right to Fair Compensation, Resettlement, Rehabilitation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Bill, 2012, which was scheduled to be introduced in Parliament in the...

-The Hindu Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, espousing the cause of Muslims, has knocked at the doors of the Supreme Court seeking compensation for the community’s youth who were incarcerated in jails for years as accused in bomb blast cases but were let off subsequently. A Bench of Justices T. S. Thakur and Ibrahim Kalifulla, after hearing senior counsel Amarendra Saran, agreed to examine the plight of such youth who were jailed for six or...

-The Hindu The Centre on Tuesday said Bihar and Chhattisgarh had initiated investigation into the alleged removal of uteruses of BPL women as part of a fraud to corner insurance money. Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad laid a copy of his statement, made in response to a calling attention motion sponsored by a host of MPs led by Lok Jan Shakti Party president Ram Vilas Paswan, in the Rajya...