Four farmers were killed in police firing as a protracted farmers’ agitation against an urban water-supply project in Pune district turned violent on Tuesday afternoon. Several farmers and 20 policemen were injured, two of them seriously. More than 300 protesters were rounded up. A strong crackdown restored traffic on the blocked Pune-Mumbai expressway, Pune rural police said. Around 1.30pm, more than 400 villagers, agitating for years against an urban water supply project they...

-The Times of India   District collector Vikas Deshmukh on Wednesday instructed the commissioner of the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) to stop the ongoing work on the Pavana pipeline project that led to a violent protest by farmers from Maval taluka on the Pune-Mumbai expressway on Tuesday. The collector also announced the appointment of sub-divisional magistrate of Maval Sanjay Patil for conducting a magisterial inquiry into the incident. Speaking to TOI,...

Draft Bill on land acquisition pegs compensation on market value but how government agencies will reach this value remains a concern In response to farmers’ agitation in the last few years over faulty land acquisition and poor compensation—the Tata-Singur fiasco in West Bengal, Posco in Orissa or the recent farmers’ agitation in Noida—the ministry of rural development is planning to replace the archaic Land Acquisition Bill, 1894. It has come up...

IF YOU walked down the streets of Jantar Mantar in New Delhi between 3-5 August, you would see what TV cameras aren’t putting out on primetime news. Thousands of farmers from Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh to Rohtak in Haryana. On protest. Against the systematic grabbing of their land by various state governments across the political spectrum. On one side of the road, on large green carpets, are about 3,000 farmers,...

Agitation suspended for 3 months, Authority promises special scheme for land acquired between 1976 and 1997 The Noida Authority will provide five per cent developed land to farmers in a period of three months, officials promised at a meeting with residents of 54 villages on Saturday. With this, the Authority was able to defer an agitation by farmers from the region, which was scheduled to begin on Sunday. In a meeting that...