The views of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) panel on violation of Forest Right Act in the Posco project site area is likely to further delay the land acquisition process and precipitate the problems for the South Korean steel major which has been facing uphill task in acquiring land for the project due to local protests. The MoEF panel visited the Posco project site villages yesterday and interacted...

A committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) on Saturday found that the green signal for land acquisition for the proposed Posco-India steel plant project in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district was given, ignoring implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. The three-member committee that visited villages facing displacement observed that forest land could not be diverted for other purposes without settlement of rights under the FRA. It asked villagers to...

Says India will be one of the biggest beneficiaries ‘I am trying to bridge gap between academic work and policy making' ‘Need for honest attempt for interflow of ideas from think tanks and use them in policy making' Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday said that India cannot accept any international agreement without equity and insisted on equitable access to global atmospheric space. “This is a matter of survival,” he told a press...

It's perhaps the first time the Union government has rejected an industrial project floated by an MP of its own party. In fact, the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has asked Chhattisgarh government to take action against Congress MP and industrialist Naveen Jindal's company, Jindal Power Limited (JPL). Worse, a close look at the exchange between JPL and various government bodies shows the company persisted with the project despite...

A tussle between the Chhattisgarh government and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) over an elephant reserve has reached the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). And the dispute is emblematic of the way the richly forested state is hurtling to get the developed tag by shaving off its pristine tree cover. Since 2004, the Chhattisgarh government has signed 102 memorandum of understandings (MOUs) with industrial houses for production of steel,...