A Bill that seeks to amend the existing law governing exploration and production of oil and gas as well as delink petroleum operations from mining operations was passed by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday (March 12, 2025). The Oilfields (Regulation and Development) Amendment Bill, 2024, is aimed at boosting investment …
While it is widely agreed that an important goal of Panchayati Raj is to ensure better implementation of government's rural development programmes by ensuring participation of people, it is also important to assert that the Panchayati Raj insitutions at various levels (or three tiers) is certainly not restricted to blind …
AS VILLAGE pramukh Madhuben Shiayal finished addressing the meeting, a dozen koli men and a handful of women who had taken off time from weeding the bajri fields got up to go. The hot April sun blazed over Khared, a village in Mahuva taluka in Bhavnagar district of southern Gujarat. …
Implementing agency of MGNREGS will have nothing to do with audit process The Comptroller and Auditor General of India will henceforth annually audit the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) accounts and the report would be tabled in Parliament. Under the notified new social audit rules of MGNREGS, …
Union environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh, along with Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, on Wednesday launched a programme giving tribals right to harvest bamboo as a forest produce in a tribal village here. Ramesh and Chavan handed over transit passes to tribals of Lekha Mendha village thus according them …
Letter from Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State (Independent Charge) Environment & Forests to Prithviraj Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra on whether access to and collection of bamboo in the reserve forest amounts to a forest offence under the Indian Forest Year 1927.
Members of the Sal Ghati Sangharsh Morcha have been on an indefinite protest in the Jadera area near Chamba against the 4.5-MW Hul stage-I micro hydel project for the past nine days. Their contention is that there will be no water left for the ongoing and future drinking water and …
Reacting to Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh's statement that there would be no rethink on Jaitapur nuclear power project, Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray today said it was a "mockery". Shiv Sena has sided with the local people in the coastal Ratnagiri district who are opposing the project. Thackeray …
BHUBANESWAR: Even as Union Minister of State for Environment and Forest (MoEF) Jairam Ramesh put the conditional clearance to Posco project on hold basing on an e-mail, the Orissa Government report to the Centre has claimed that the anti-Posco activist have forged and fabricated documents on palli sabha resolutions. "The …
A day after Union Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh put the forest clearance for the Rs 54,000- crore POSCO steel project on hold, the state government said it would closely examine the MoEF order before taking any further action. On Thursday, Ramesh had held back forest clearance, asking the …
Jagatsinghpur: The anti-Posco activists under the banner of Posco Pratirodha Sangram Samiti (PPSS) on Thursday decided to congregate at a meeting at Patanahat on Friday in protest against the assurance report submitted by the Odisha government on Wednesday to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). In the protest meeting …
South Korean steelmaker Posco will have to wait a while longer before it can embark on its . 54,000-crore integrated steel plant and port project in Odisha. The environment ministry has not accepted the assurance given by the state government that there were no other traditional forest dwellers or tribals …
The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests has asked states to treat bamboo as a minor forest produce (MFP). Environment minister Jairam Ramesh directed the states to ask their forest departments to follow this categorisation in a letter dated March 21. He also asked the states to respect the rights …
In an effort to wean away tribals from the Maoists, the Environment Ministry is pushing for a minimum support price for minor forest produce like bamboo and tendu patta. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh is taking up the matter with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. A minimum support price (MSP) for minor …
It took the Jharkhand government a murder, an abduction and angry protests to stop construction of a dam that began in a tribal heartland without informing people whose land was acquired. The dam will submerge 365 hectares (ha) of about 100 families. As per rules, any acquisition is preceded by …
It took the Jharkhand government a murder, an abduction and angry protests to stop construction of a dam that began in a tribal heartland without informing people whose land was acquired.
AN EXPERT committee, formed by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, has recommended that trade control of tendu leaves, critical for forest dwellers’ income, should vest in the state. The panel, headed by agriculture economist T Haque, was set up to ensure ownership rights of forest dwellers over minor forest produce …
MENDHA Lekha village in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra staged a novel protest on February 15. It organised a bamboo sale in the village to highlight the forest department’s refusal to grant transit passes to transport bamboo out of the village for sale. Mendha Lekha was one of the first two …
After the nuclear disaster at Fukushima plant in Japan, fear has gripped Chutka and nearby areas of the tribal-dominated Mandla district of the State, as Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) has decided to set up an atomic power station here to generate 1400 MW power. Members of Chutka …
