Judgment of the Supreme Court in the matter of In Re: Zudpi Jungle Lands. A batch of applications involved a peculiar issue concerning the situation prevailing in the six districts of eastern Vidarbha region namely Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. The issue pertains to the status of the …
All through June 2005, people living around the Union Carbide factory site in Bhopal found chemical dust blowing through the air, accompanied by bad odours. The haze came from the factory site where, 21 years after the Bhopal gas leak, state authorities have finally embarked on a cleanup. This cleanup …
Flaring concern: Nigeria's rural communities affected by gas-flaring recently filed a lawsuit in the federal High Court in Benin city to make oil giants Shell, Exxon, Chevron and Total desist from the illegal practice. The Nigerian government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation have also been named in the case, …
Stay order: A division bench of the Gujarat High Court (HC), comprising chief justice Bhawani Singh and justice H K Rathod, recently passed an order that prevents the state's forest and revenue departments from forcibly evicting tribals staying in the Sagbara taluka of Narmada district. The HC said the directive …
theSupreme Court (sc), on May 10, 2005, stayed the Rajasthan High Court's (hc's) May 2, 2005 order, which directed the Punjab government to hand over the maintenance of three barrages (Ropar, Harike and Ferozepur) of the Bhakra and Beas projects to the Bhakra Beas Management Board (bbmb), a Union government …
If you use a cell phone, take a call on its health effects. Despite cell phone manufacturers sticking to the line that there are no confirmed adverse effects of the contrivance, studies doubting its innocuousness continue to appear with a grim regularity. Not only that; its innocence is being lawfully …
delhi's been improving its environs. Mostly driven by the judiciary acting in response to public interest petitions, Delhi's breathing easier now. But the fallout of Delhi's clean-up on villages surrounding it has not been good. Karkar Model village in Sahibabad is a case in point. Years of pollution from the …
Mcdonald's in danger: The US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled on January 25, 2005, that the two teenagers who had filed a case against fast food giant McDonald's Corporation (Illinois) in 2003, blaming it for their obesity, were entitled to move forward with the lawsuit. The …
To Jindal Steel's expansion planNearly 2,000 written complaints and a protest document signed by 40,000 people were submitted at a public hearing against the expansion plan of Jindal Steel and Power Plant in Raigarh, Chhattisgarh. Tension prevailed during the entire course of the public hearing, held on January 29, 2005. …
Two Rajasthan high court advocates, Madhav Mitra and R.S. Chauhan, under the auspices of NGO Public Action Group, have filed a public inerest litigation demanding that packaged food companies, like soft drink makers, be directed to print the exact level of pesticide content on the food packs. A bench comprising …
a recent move of the Supreme Court (sc) might spell trouble for the controversial Member of Parliament Local Areas Development Scheme (mplads). On July 27, 2004, the sc referred three public interest litigations (pil) against mplads to a constitution bench. The bench would determine the constitutional validity of the scheme …
the Allahabad High Court (hc) has issued notices to top officials of the Union and state governments regarding mismanagement of hospital waste at Meerut in Uttar Pradesh (up). The court's action came in response to a public interest litigation (pil) petition filed by Janhit Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (ngo). The …
in what is perhaps a first for India, a Mumbai civil court recently ordered a cellular phone service provider to dismantle one of its networking antennae from a residential apartment over fears that the device was causing radiation exposure. The latent message behind the directive is that mobile phone towers …
rapped for laxity: The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) has received a sharp reprimand from the Delhi High Court (HC) for failing to ensure the closure of polluting units in the capital. The rebuke came when a division bench, comprising Chief Justice B C Patel and Justice B D Ahmed, …
The Santa Clara County Superior Court in California, usa, has temporarily halted the 50 toxic chemical exposure claims filed by current and former employees against technology giant International Business Machines Inc (ibm). Judge Robert Baines has ordered that a third-party mediator be selected to resolve the court cases. The workers …
Untrammeled urbanisation has put paid to many water bodies in Hyderabad. The latest victims are the Osmansagar and Himayatsagar reservoirs. These human-made lakes have supplied the bulk of the city's water needs for nearly eight decades. In 2002, Hyderabad received about 45 million gallons of water each day from Himayatsagar …
More than two years ago, the Union ministry of urban development and poverty alleviation (moud) issued a notification making wastewater recycling compulsory in Delhi. But the rules have not been enforced to date, with the capital's implementing agencies simply washing their hands of the job. According to the notification dated …
Southeast Asia Rivers Network & 82 Others China's plan to build a series of dams over southeast Asia's second largest river has evoked a strong response from environmental, human rights and ethnic groups in Thailand and Burma
after finding high levels of dioxin-related compounds in breast milk of women living near landfills, a Vadodara-based non-governmental organisation intends to file a public interest litigation (pil) against the Gujarat Pollution Control Board and the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (vmc). Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (pss), the ngo, alleges that people's health is …
almost a year after the residents' welfare association (rwa) of a slum cluster filed the capital's first petition against illegal extraction and sale of groundwater, the Delhi High Court (hc) has ordered that a committee be set up to probe the matter. The case has brought to the fore another …
a group of haemophiliacs, who contracted aids and Hepatitis b through blood transfusion, recently filed a lawsuit in the federal court in San Francisco against four manufacturers of clotting agents. The two components of blood
