New Delhi: In another embarrassment for the poll-bound BSP government in Uttar Pradesh, the Union environment ministry has put Ansal’s 2,400-acre housing project, Hi-Tech Township City, at Dadri on hold for ‘illegally’ reclaiming a wetland in the plot. The ministry has sent a showcause notice to the project developers under the Environment Protection Act, asking them to explain why legal action should not be taken for violating the clearance norms and the project should not be scrapped.

SALEPUR: There is just one tubewell in Budukunia village under Mahanga gram panchayat to cater to a population of 150 people. However, the tubewell discharges water with high iron content which is unfit for consumption. A long-standing demand for a tubewell has gone unheeded. Under these circumstances, people are forced to drink polluted water from natural water channels.

New Delhi: Union environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan on Monday said, “I shall reject any project recommended for clearing without adhering to the Forest Rights Act (FRA) and the ministry’s order.” This was in response to a TOI story on the Forest Advisory Committee violating ministry directive while clearing projects.

SHILLONG: A joint investigation committee (JIC) comprising State Chief Conservator of Forest and Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest from the Union Ministry of Forest and Environment, Regional Office has been constituted to relook into the alleged random exploitation of forest land by the cement industries in Jaintia Hills district.

The constitution of the JIC came even after the State constituted high level committee’s (HLC) findings submitted in November 2011 acknowledged that the cement industries have intruded into the forest land.

Work on the survey of land at Gorakhpur village — the site for Haryana’s first nuclear power plant — came to a halt on Monday after irate villagers held three engineers of a private company hostage for five hours. According to sources, the engineers of DBM Geo-Technology and Construction Company, working for the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, had gone to the village without taking the local administration into confidence. For the last six days, they had been collecting soil and water samples. Farmers are not ready to part with their land for the project.

The Supreme Court has directed the Bangalore City Cooperative Housing Society Ltd to return the vacant portion of the land it had acquired years ago to its rightful owners, holding that the land acquisition procedure by the state government was “illegal.”

A Bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly dismissed the society’s appeal against judgments by the Karnataka High Court in the case.

GUWAHATI: Farmers across India have been making claims for crop losses under the central government’s National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS).

However, the farmers in the northeastern states, mainly in Assam, are not even aware any such scheme exists, said an expert.
K.M. Buzarbaruah, vice chancellor of the Jorhat-based Assam Agricultural University, told IANS no claims at all have been made by the farmers of Assam and other northeastern states last year for their crop losses.

Bhubaneswar: With the culling of over 16,000 poultry birds in the second day, the total birds culled during the two days in the 3km radius of the Central Poultry Development Organisation, Bhubaneswar, has been around 36,000. The culling operation was undertaken in 29 wards within the 3km radius of the CDPO farm after detection of the H5N1 virus and following the advisory from the agriculture ministry to prevent the spread of the avian influenza.

Contrary to its public posturing on the cow, the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh has swept under the carpet a scam in a Central scheme that saw hundreds of mortalities mainly because old cows were purchased. Kamdhenu Integrated Tribal Dairy Development Scheme, for which the Centre had provided Rs 54.09 crore between 2006 and 2009 to purchase cattle, failed in each of the 11 tribal districts where it was in operation. While a few better breed cows were bought from Haryana, most animals were purchased from cattle fairs in the state or were supplied by the state livestock corporation.

Members of Rapid Response Teams (RRTs), engaged in the culling of poultry birds, on Monday faced an embarrassing situation in Bhubaneswar. As they approached households in slums to collect birds to ward off the spread of the avian influenza, they found all houses locked. Frustrated, the RRTs returned emptied handed.

“When we went to different slums to collect birds from their owners, we found most of the houses locked. At some places, we found the birds roaming around but we could not catch them in absence of their owners,” RRT official Dr Ranjan Kumar Sahoo said.