-Down to Earth The villages are now officially recognised and have been renamed as Tehri Bhagirathi Nagar, Ghonti Village and Chhaam After nearly four decades of struggle by displaced residents, the Uttarakhand government has finally recognised three villages as revenue villages, displaced due to the construction of the Tehri Dam. With this recognition, the villages will now have Land Rights, basic amenities like electricity, water, health services, educational institutions, banks, post offices...

-Livemint.com Sudha Bharadwaj fights for labour rights and is against land acquisition When Sudha Bharadwaj travels in Chhattisgarh, almost everyone recognizes her. She is what the locals would call a “woman of the people”. Bharadwaj, 54, is tall, with an unassuming demeanour. She has been living in the state for 29 years now, working as a trade unionist, a civil rights activist against land acquisition, and, more recently, as a lawyer. “If...

-Down to Earth The rate at which informal housing is being destroyed probably far exceeds the rate at which formal housing is being constructed Troubled by the degradation of environment on and around railway tracks, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) recently directed Delhi government to relocate all illegal settlements along tracks in Delhi. The tribunal reasoned that the residents of these settlements practise open defecation and litter on the tracks. Housing of the...

-Hindustan Times Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh government will prepare a legal framework for leasing land for agriculture that would not put the land owner at a disadvantage but will provide rights to the lease holder, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Tuesday. Chouhan was addressing the media at the conclusion of an exercise launched by the state government to assess the ground situation against the backdrop of the farming crisis. He said that...

-The Times of India The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is a dream long deferred, and now it looks like the courts can barely conceal their impatience. A Supreme Court bench, hearing a case on a Hindu woman's petition on inheritance, was recently stirred into ordering an examination of practices like polygamy and triple talaq in Muslim personal law, which it declared "injurious to public morals". The Centre is already on a deadline...