This wedding season, anxious grooms from Parsa and Ghatburra, two villages in Chhattisgarh's Surguja district, were offered financial assistance from an unlikely source. Adani Mining Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd, was handing out loans to all those who could prove that the money would be spent on marriage arrangements. “A company official took us to the bank, opened accounts in our names, and gave us cheques for Rs....

-PTI   The barriers erected by villagers to cordon off South Korean steel major Posco's proposed steel plant in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district have been removed, paving the way for site preparatory activities to resume on the much-delayed Rs 52,000 crore project. Work at the project site resumed on Saturday, after a gap of 25 days, when locals removed two bamboo gates erected by them at Gadakujang and Nuagaon following talks with state government...

-The Economic Times   The Orissa High Court on Friday stayed the acquisition of land for building the much-delayed 12-million tonne Posco project, dealing a further setback to the India plans of the South Korean steel major which has not been able to progress much for the past five years. In a ruling on Friday, the high court ordered status quo on the private land being acquired by the state government that...

-The Hindu   The Orissa High Court on Friday refused to pass any interim stay with regard to acquisition of forest land by the State government for Posco project but ordered that the status quo with regard to acquisition of private land for the project shall be maintained. The Division Bench of Chief Justice V Gopala Gowda and Justice B N Mohapatra, which had been hearing at least two PILs with regard to...

One started reading the new Draft National Land Acquisition and Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill 2011 with expectations of a great improvement over the 2007 Bills. There are indeed some very good features in the new Bill but, on the whole, one must regretfully report disappointment. Let us see how the Bill deals with some of the key issues involved. (i) Acquisition of agricultural land: The Bill rules out the acquisition, not...