Calcutta, Aug. 28: Landlosers will be compensated with land for the first time in Bengal.

The offer will be part of a package for building an airport in Andal, Burdwan

Mosquito repellents used by policemen on night patrol along the expressway. (Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya)

New Delhi, Aug. 25: If the Bengal government wants to return some of the Singur land to the original owners, it can bypass the legal difficulties by enacting a law in the Assembly, legal experts say.

One reason the state has cited to reject Mamata Banerjee's demand to hand back 400 acres to unwilling landlosers is that the law doesn't allow return of acquired land.

LANDING IN TROUBLE
Saubhadra Chatterji / Semrota (uttar Pradesh) August 22, 2008, 1:01 IST

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Bhupinder Singh Hooda should take heart. They are not alone in facing political storms over their governments' land acquisition efforts.

Congress' star general secretary, Rahul Gandhi, too, got the rough edge of his constituency's tongue when, during a free-wheeling interaction in Amethi, his voters berated him for eyeing their land, even if for development.

Greater Noida: The conflict between the residents of Ghori Bachhera village and Noida police and administration, seems to have blown over after a team of farmers met UP cabinet secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh in New Delhi on Tuesday evening.
The Ghori Bachhera representatives reportedly agreed to a compensation of Rs 10 lakh for each of the five deceased who were killed in the police firing recently. This is, significantly, the first official admission that five farmers were killed in the confrontation of August 13, rather than the four the police had initially claimed.

Nalas (Rajpura): Following agitation by villagers in Nabha, now residents of over seven villages near Rajpura are up in arms against the government's plan to procure around 1,000 acres of fertile land for the 1,320 MV Rajpura Thermal Power Project (RTPP) near Nalas.

The villagers demand is to be paid at par with the Jheurheri villagers, who received compensation after their land was acquired for an international airport near Mohali.

Maharashtra preparing to relocate people but without groundwork

Kadapa, Aug. 9: The Telugu Desam (TD) president, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, alleged that the government was taking land from the poor in the name of establishing Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and demanded the release of a white paper on SEZs.

Speaking to newsmen at Potladurthy in Yerraguntla mandal in Kadapa district on Saturday, he said the white paper should include details on purchase of land in various parts of the state, their market rate, amount paid to farmers, fees paid in registrar offices and allocation of lands.

The United Nation's ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (cop 9) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (cbd) was recently held in Bonn, Germany. Amidst contentions relating to bio-fuels and abs (Access and Benefit Sharing), Meena Gupta, secretary, ministry for environment and forests, finds time to give an update on India's position on these issues to Yashvendra Singh