India’s Supreme Court dismissed a petition on Wednesday to reconsider a decision to reduce the charges against seven men convicted for their roles in the 1984 leak at the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal. The ruling was a setback to the victims of the gas leak who sought tougher penalties against the executives serving at the time of the accident, which killed 3,000 people and sickened thousands more. India’s...

Expressing disappointment with a Supreme Court order that reversed a Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment on rehabilitation and resettlement of adult sons of the Omkareshwar dam displaced people, the Madhya Pradesh unit of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) on Thursday said it would file a review plea. “These cases were filed by the Madhya Pradesh government against High Court orders that favoured proper rehabilitation under the land-for-land policy for dam-displaced people,”...

Issues related to transportation of food grains persist in the 293 PDS outlets The Bombay High Court has directed the Maharashtra government to appoint a nodal officer by May 31 in the Melghat region to coordinate the work of nine departments which, apart from the public distribution system (PDS), are engaged in tribal development and child welfare. This post, meant for an IAS officer, had been lying vacant for more than two...

To prevent starvation deaths and malnutrition To ensure that no starvation death takes place and people are saved from malnutrition as far as possible, the Supreme Court on Saturday directed the Centre to release five million tonnes of foodgrains immediately for distribution in 150 most poverty-stricken districts or other poorer segments in the country. Though it was a holiday for the court, a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma held...

-The Hindu   Court wants Centre to “distribute foodgrains on an individual basis” The Supreme Court on Saturday asked the Planning Commission to revise the per capita norms to determine below poverty line looking to the price index of May 2011 or any other subsequent dates. A Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma, at a special sitting to hear the case relating to streamlining of the public distribution system, pointed out...