The Chhattisgarh High Court on Tuesday quashed the proceedings conducted by the state government for acquiring land for four big companies investing in the state's power sector.

Chhattisgarh government has decided to give respite in the water tax to the commercial shops where water consumption has been very less.

The shops trading foodgrains, stationary and garment would be covered under the orbit of respite as the water utilization in such shops had been nominal. They traders were earlier paying water tax at par with the other establishment like hotels, restaurant, auto service centre, tea-coffee shops, milk parlour etc where water consumption was more. According to the tax structure under the civic body act in Chhattisgarh, the shops and business establishment were paying Rs 350 per month in the area coming under Municipal Corporation and Rs 300 in panchayat limits.

The Chhattisgarh government has decided to waive off farm loan of around 90,000 farmers in the state who had failed to repay the amount due to poor agriculture yield.

The farmers, who had taken loan during the period 1991 and 1997 from different cooperative and rural banks, would heave a sigh of relief with the state government’s announcement. The beneficiary includes mostly small and medium farmer.

Chhattisgarh government has disbursed about Rs 1272 crore to farmers in the state as farm loan at a nominal rate of interest of one per cent per annum.

The credit disbursement to the farmers is about 75 per cent of the target set by the state government for distributing loan in the current kharif session 2012-13. The loan disbursement under a state government scheme started from April 1. “Till now, loans to the tune of Rs 1272.43 crore had been disbursed to the farmers in the state,” officials with the cooperative department said. The amount is about Rs 358.43 crore more than the loan disbursed during the corresponding period last year, the added.

New Delhi Jindal Power continues to sell electricity from its Tamnar power plant on a merchant basis, ignoring the coal ministry’s recent directive that stipulates that power plants running on captive coal must not quote a higher price for power supply in tariff bidding than those offered by generating stations based on fuel linkage from Coal India.

JPL, a subsidiary of Jindal Steel and Power, has quoted a R5.27-a-unit price to supply power to APCDPCL, an Andhra Pradesh discom, from its Tamnar plant based on captive coal, compared with R4.29 and R4.4 a unit offered by KSK Mahanadi and Corporate Power plants running on coal supplied by CIL under long-term linkage, according to industry sources.

Tata steel has got another breather as the Chhattisgarh government has renewed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) it had signed for setting up a mega steel plant in Bastar region for the third time.

The steel major is setting up a 5.5 Million Tonne Per Annum (MTPA) Greenfield integrated steel plant in Lohandiguda area of Bastar district. The company has inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Chhattisgarh Government in on June 6, 2005. The MoU was valid for three years.

Four cement plants have been shut down in Chhattisgarh since early this month on alleged violation of air pollution control norms.

The Rs 250-crore road project of the Delhi-based DS Construction (DSC) Limited in Chhattisgarh is heading for a bumpy ride with company’s another effort to set up toll plaza going into vain.

The Chhattisgarh High Court has granted stay on the proposed toll plaza in Sunder Nagar locality on the 44 km Tatibandh (through ring road) and Arang four-lane project that DSC had constructed. The company had bagged the contract from National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) in 2006 on Built-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis.

Farmers allege compensation not enough

A group of men is sitting under a grove, playing a game of cards at noon. Around them, thousands of acres of land, mostly arable, lie dotted with small hamlets. There are no roads, just dust tracks that wind around low limestone stocks and through dusty fields. This is Lohandiguda, where one of the world’s largest steel companies wants to build a five-million-tonnes-per-annum integrated steel plant. But the proposed Rs 19,500-crore Tata Steel project in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district has made little headway since the steelmaker signed a memorandum of understanding with the state government in June 2005.

NMDC, whose presence in Bailadila predates the Naxal problem, now pours money into security and faces issues of despatching the ore

India’s finest iron ore deposits rise abruptly from the forest floor — 32 km of undulating massiveness, four km wide and over 1,260 metres above sea level at its highest point. From the densely wooded plains of Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, its swelling shape resembles an ox’s hump, prompting the tribes who have lived under its shadow for centuries to name it ‘Bailadila’.