Even as the number on attacks RTI activists in the state have become frighteningly routine, political leaders who have come under the scanner, mostly from the ruling BJP, are still untouched. In the latest incident in which Porbandar-based advocate and social worker Bhagu Devani was stabbed on last Friday, police have arrested Laku Odedara, brother of former Porbandar Nagarpalika president Vikram Odedara, along with three others but former irrigation minister Babu...

The episodes of violence in land acquisition by the government, as witnessed recently in Bhatta-Parsaul in Uttar Pradesh and in other states earlier, occur because patterns of violence are inbuilt into the process. Despite a bill pending in Parliament since 2007, there has been little effort by political parties to evolve a consensus on acquisition of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. The law as at present and also the provisions...

-The Telegraph   The Mamata Banerjee government today started the process of returning land to farmers in Singur, snubbing the Tata attempt to open a dialogue to maintain status quo on the 997-acre plot. Rabindranath Bhattacharya, the school education minister and MLA from Singur, and Becharam Manna, the MLA from Haripal, oversaw distribution of over 3,000 application forms among farmers in Gopalnagar, Beraberi, Bajemelia, Joymollah, Khaserbheri and Singherbheri. These farmers had not accepted...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

-PTI   The Calcutta high court on Monday refused to pass an interim order restraining the West Bengal government from distributing to farmers in Singur the land acquired earlier to set up Tata'a car manufacturing unit. On Tata Motor's plea that an interim injunction be passed to restrain distribution of the land from tomorrow, Justice Saumitra Pal said in that case the company's original petition challenging the Singur Land Rehablitation and Development...