The National Human Rights Commission has asked the Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe a complaint by Amar Ujala reporter Sammiuddin alias Neelu that he was falsely implicated by the Lakhimpur Kheri district police in Uttar Pradesh in a criminal case under the Wildlife Act. The police were threatening that he would be bumped off in an encounter, the complainant alleged. The CBI should also probe the...

-The Deccan Chronicle   Tribal organisations and Adivasi leaders, fighting against a proposal to develop Kawal Wildlife sanctuary as a tiger reserve by evicting adivasis dwelling there for a long time, are willing to discuss the issue only if the state government is ready to hold gram sabhas, a prerequisite for setting up any project under the PESA (Panchayat Raj Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996. District officials concerned have declared the...

-The Times of India   Fifty-one tigers have died in different states of India between January and December 5, 2011, according to statistics collated by a prominent Wildlife NGO. A tigress shot dead outside Kaziranga Park in Assam on Monday is the latest in that list. Figures provided by Wildlife Protection Society of India show that 14 tigers perished in Uttarakhand, the highest in a single state. Karnataka takes the second place with...

-The Hindu   The Rajasthan Cabinet on Monday put its seal of approval on a controversial decision to give khatedari rights to over 30,000 farmers occupying the custodian land in Alwar, Bharatpur, Hanumangarh and Sriganganagar districts, vacated mostly be those driven out of the State during the Partition, by paying a nominal regularisation fee. The farmers, whose ancestors were allotted the custodian land, were earlier required to pay 25 per cent of the...

Chikkamade Gowda had once told the Centre to give him poison. It was better than being evicted from his forest habitat. That was in 1974. Thirty-seven years on, the Soliga tribal and some 16,500 fellow sufferers are celebrating their homecoming, thanks to a landmark central amendment. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2008, allows them to use nearly 60 per cent of their ancestral land,...