The West Bengal govt's role as a non-market intermediary in an essentially private land transaction is questionable The West Bengal government has passed a new legislation that transfers the land back to those who refused to accept the compensation that they were offered during the acquisition of their lands for the Tata Nano factory. The Tata group has promptly gone to court claiming that this is an unconstitutional Act. Surely one...

-The Telegraph   Mamata Banerjee today announced that her government would not acquire land at New Town in Rajarhat anymore. “There will be no further acquisition of land in Rajarhat-New Town,” the chief minister said this evening after a meeting with housing minister Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. Labour minister Purnendu Bose, the vice-chairperson of the Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (Hidco), its managing director Saurabh Das and law minister Malay Ghatak were also present. Mamata...

-PTI   The CPI today welcomed Mamata Banerjee Government's decision to return land to unwilling farmers in Singur and said it was improper for the CPI(M) to acquire farmland for the Tata project. "The decision of returning land to the unwilling farmers of Singur is good. We are always against taking agricultural land and there is no objection in returning the land," CPI General Secretary AB Bardhan said. Criticising the CPI(M) for acquiring...

-The Telegraph   Multiple landslides across West Sikkim last night triggered by torrential rain have killed 16 persons and cut off the inter-district road connectivity and power and water supply for more than 20 hours. The highest death toll was reported from Khurong Kewa Dara along the Pelling-Dentam road, 15km from Geyzing, the district headquarters of West Sikkim. A three-month-old baby was among the 14 people who were buried alive at Khurong...

-The Economic Times   All public data-from that on glacier meltdowns to monsoon charts to benami land--will be freely available at the click of a mouse with the launch of a national data portal next month. Modeled on US chief information officer Vivek Kundra's Data.gov.us project, the science and technology ministry's portal-- data.gov.in--aims to democratize data, and make the government more "open". "We plan to launch data.gov.in by next month. Once the National...