The wood panelled office in Delhi's Paryavaran Bhawan is now a 'no-go' zone.

If the alarming rate of elephant deaths in the State has shocked the Odisha Government, it must brace for more.

A task force will be set up under the Rural Development Minister to take the process forward and the first meeting will be held on October 17

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today met Jan Satyagraha activists and agreed to their demands for framing a National Land Reforms Policy, thus cutting short the march of about 50,000 landless people to Delhi. The march, which started on October 2 from Gwalior, was discontinued after Ramesh signed an agreement with Jan Satyagraha leader P V Rajagopal for bringing in land reforms and addressing the issues of the landless poor in the country.

Draft Cabinet note on NIB not sent to me, he says

Infrastructure projects that come up on forest land must comply with the Forest Rights Act (FRA), Union Tribal Affairs Minister Kishore Chandra Deo has said. No land in a Fifth Schedule area should be handed over to any industry if it violated the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), Mr. Deo said, responding to a query whether he agreed with Environment and Forests Minister Jayanthi Natarajan’s opposition to the proposed National Investment Board (NIB) that hopes to fast-forward clearances for large infrastructure projects.

Efforts of Jairam and Jyotiraditya to talk them out of it fail

MHOW: Landless tribals, who protested against their continued neglect by taking over about 300 acres of forest land in Junapani area near the famous Patalpani waterfall on Saturday night, left the

The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has been accused of allocating over 1.86 lakh hectares of forest land for mining without the consent of gram sabhas as has been made mandatory under the Forest Rights Act.

In all, 1,82,389 hectares of forest land was diverted by the environment ministry between January 2008 and August 2011. The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) headed by T. Chatterjee, secretary of MoEF, has recommended diversion of four additional projects located in prime forest land in 2012. This includes 151,762 hectares for the Lara Super Thermal Power Plant in the Raigarh district of Chattisgarh and 766,393 hectares of forest land for the Talaipall Coal Mining Project in the Raigarh and Dharmajaigarh forest divisions of Chattisgarh.