The Union Environment Ministry on Friday issued a show cause notice to the controversial Lavasa Corporation Limited (LCL), raising serious questions over a number of its constructions that it deems as ‘violations.' Lavasa, India's first hill city, is the ambitious project undertaken by Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) about 45 km from Pune. To be built over 25,000 acres, the luxurious city now faces a serious problem with the Ministry notice. The company...

NIIRA RADIA — owner of PR company Vaishnavi Communications, among others — is not merely a fixer in the old sense of the word. She is a thermometer reading for a very ill society. In April this year, a clutch of mysterious documents had made their way to several media houses. At face value the documents seemed a synopsis of phone conversations between Niira — a powerful lobbyist for Mukesh...

The Hindu MEDIA FOCUS: "Perhaps because of the large number of journalists involved in the controversy, most Indian newspapers and TV channels have not covered the Radia tapes at all." The Niira Radia episode raises questions about the boundary between legitimate news gathering, lobbying and influence peddling. The publication of taped conversations between Niira Radia — a lobbyist for Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata with a keen interest in the allocation of...

The Navi Mumbai airport has finally got the green signal, with a compromise being worked out after one and a half years of tussling between the Environment Ministry on the one hand, and the Civil Aviation Ministry and the Maharashtra government on the other. The decision was announced jointly on Monday by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, his Civil Aviation counterpart Praful Patel and the new Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan. While the...

Leading micro-lender SKS Microfinance today hinted that it could move the courts if the recent Andhra Pradesh notification prohibiting collection of loan repayments on a weekly basis is not withdrawn.The notification stipulated that the periodicity of repayment by self-help group (SGH) members to MFIs should not be less than a month, even under existing loan agreements.However, microfinance institutions operating in the state have railed against the move."In the event the...