The Bombay High Court at Goa on Friday quashed the allotment of land on lease by the State-owned industry promotion body to the promoters of seven Special Economic Zone(SEZ) projects upholding the State Government's power to scrap the SEZ policy and the projects in public interest. A Bench comprising Justice A. S. Oka and Justice F. M. Reis, inter alia ruled that that there was lack of fairness and transparency in...

Prosen Sam is a beneficiary of land reforms. Once a landless labourer, his life changed after the Left Front government gave him a three-bigha plot in 1984. “I am still a farmer but my sons have their own businesses,” boasted the 65-year-old resident of Kurumba village in Birbhum, a proud participant in Friday’s rally by the Left Front’s farmer wings in Metro Channel. The meeting, attended by around 4,000 people from across...

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 Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), probing alleged financial bungling in the Commonwealth Games-related projects, has referred certain cases to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to check whether there was violation of foreign exchange laws. Official sources said that projects like construction of Commonwealth Games Village near Akshardham temple and flyovers, hiring and procurement of medical and fitness equipment and conduct of outdoor publicity campaign by the Organising Committee may come under the...

The people are showing who the boss is. The weapon in their hands is the internet, which, in the last five days, has seen frantic activism against "power brokering" by journalists in collusion with corporate groups and top government politicians. It all began with the publication of sensational tapes related to the 2G spectrum scam by two magazines over the weekend. Two high-profile journalists, Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, whose names...