Directive comes in the wake of turmoil in Greater Noida Supplementing political offensive with a dose of administrative endeavour, in the build-up to the next round of Assembly elections, focussed on Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minster Manmohan Singh has asked Union Minister for Rural Development Vilasrao Deshmukh to finalise at the earliest the two amended Bills on land acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement. Confirming Dr. Singh's directive, Mr. Deshmukh told The Hindu...

Giving the police a slip, Rahul Gandhi rode pillion on a motorcycle just before dawn on Wednesday to the epicentre of violent clashes in this district and met farmers protesting Uttar Pradesh government's land acquisition policy. The strong police force deployed at the Bhatta Parsaul village, which witnessed violent clashes between the police and farmers, apparently failed to notice the Congress general secretary when he reached the Delhi suburb in...

A LEAFY VILLAGE in Kerala, Pathanpara, never found access to India’s electricity grid. That is why for the last several years, this village has been generating its own electricity. Raju, a dhoti-clad cashew nut farmer, operates Pathanpara’s five kilowatt (KW) micro hydropower plant. He lives in the village and earns a salary of Rs 2,250, paid by the People’s Electricity Committee (PEC). The power generated is shared equally by the village,...

Arundhati Roy’s hilltop bungalow in a protected forest area will be demolished, a Madhya Pradesh revenue court ruled today upholding a lower court’s judgment that the land was acquired illegally. The bungalow at Bariyam village in Panchmarhi, 250km southeast of Bhopal, stands on a 4,346sqft plot that the author’s husband, filmmaker Pradeep Kishan, had bought in 1994. In an eight-page verdict, Bhopal-Hoshangabad division commissioner Manoj Srivastava rejected the petitioners’ plea of ignorance...

Prashant Bhushan seeks CBI probe into financial irregularities Scrap power purchase agreement with State government Land acquisition orders served on 46 villages The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not to reverse the stop-work order imposed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests on the construction of the Maheshwar dam for “non-compliance” of various norms. The dam is being built by S. Kumars group in Madhya Pradesh. Addressing a joint...