-Scroll.in The Forest Rights Act recognises the rights of forest dwelling communities and entrusts them with the responsibility for conservation. The residents of Gunehar village in Himachal Pradesh’s Kangra district are attempting to use the Forest Rights Act to challenge the state Forest Department’s decision to hand over two hectares of local forest land to the Wildlife Department to construct an office complex. At the end of December, the Gunehar panchayat...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Thursday decided to rope in the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to audit city's forest department and other civic agencies to find out how much money was generated by them from the permission granted to cut trees. A bench of Justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Ashutosh Kumar asked the national auditor to examine the accounts as it wants to know how...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government has decided to stop funding research centres on social discrimination at several universities, prompting accusations of shielding the "Brahminical social order". "It's ironic that these centres, which research Dalits, B.R. Ambedkar's philosophy, social exclusion and inclusive policies like reservation, are being closed down when the University grants Commission (the higher education regulator) is funding courses on Vedic studies," said N. Sukumar, Ambedkar scholar and teacher of...

-The Hindu In 2014, an Indian pharmaceutical company was globally the first to receive approval to market a biosimilar, thereby affordable version, of the breast cancer drug Trastuzumab. Almost immediately, Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, innovator of the drug, filed a suit against the Indian Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to block its sale. The action firmly put their profits ahead of the lives of women with breast cancer. Roche effectively embroiled India’s...

-IANS   Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has so far granted 4.09 lakh individual titles and community titles under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, a state minister said on Friday. “While 4,03,760 individual titles have been distributed, 5,891 community titles have been settled under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006,” Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Development Minister Lal Bihari Himirika told the assembly. The state government...