-Hindustan Times New Delhi: While the Delhi Development Authority notified the Land Pooling Policy a month ago after years of waiting, the project cannot proceed further unless Delhi government classifies the identified agricultural lands as ‘urbanisable’. The DDA had notified the policy in May, and was looking to start registration of lands in 89 villages for pooling by August. The matter then went to the Delhi government for consideration, and the DDA...

-The Indian Express According to the note, the “revised stand” would be the basis for a presentation to be made by the ministry before the Joint Committee of Parliament on the land bill. Taking a major step back on amendments to the land bill, the government proposes to bring back the consent and Social Impact Assessment (SIA) clauses and drop its contentious move to exempt five broad categories of projects from...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Even as a Joint Parliamentary Panel is looking into the controversial Land Bill, which seeks to replace the Land Act of 2013, the National Democratic Alliance is considering diluting the controversial consent clause and offering more clarity on compensation to farmers to make the piece of legislation more acceptable. A highly-placed source told BusinessLine that “an important element of the strategy is to get the report...

-Hindustan Times While searching for updates on the United Nations Third International Conference on Financing for Development, which took place in Addis Ababa recently, I came across an interesting piece of news: Music maestro AR Rahman and Bollywood superstar Hrithik Roshan would join a seven-day global campaign to popularise the sustainable development goals (SDGs), which are a new set of universal goals, targets and indicators that 193 UN member states will...

-Hindustan Times Two years after its unanimous passage, the landmark National Food Security Act, which guarantees cheap foodgrains to two-thirds of Indians, remains largely unimplemented, research by the Hindustan Times shows. Only seven states have implemented its core provisions fully (see graphic). Five others have partially executed it, while the NDA government has stalled its rollout in the remaining states, extending the deadline for implementation thrice so far. Another extension looks likely...