In 2007, the International Labour Organization (ILO) arrived at a consensus on fishing rights and the same year a conventional called

Two pieces of legislation, which will impact millions of people displaced or threatened with displacement in the name of development, will soon come up for discussion in the monsoon session of

At long last, we have direct action from the government on the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) that neither the Goan people nor the Goa government want, but the Union Commerce Ministry seems to want to impose on the people of Goa. By cancelling in one stroke the land given to the SEZs for gross irregularities in its allotment, Chief Minister Digambar Kamat has gladdened the heart of every Goan.

SEZ tale in Goa has been of favouritism, irregularities, procedural impropriety, and totally anti-Goa. Since it was first discussed in December 2004 during the BJP regime, SEZ story took a monsterous form in 2006. Pratapsing Rane was the chief minister and Luizinho Faleiro the Industries Minister.

DURGAPUR : The CPI-M has decided to be very careful about acquiring land in areas which have elected Opposition candidates in the panchayat election.

Speeding up the land acquisition process for major infrastructure works in the district will be a focus area for the newly appointed Pune district collector Chandrakant Dalvi who took over from former district collector Prabhakar Deshmukh on Monday. With nearly 2,000 cases pending with 17 land acquisition officers, Dalvi plans to speed up the "disposal of the cases' in the district. "I have already told my land acquisition officers to brief me about the cases and my priority would be to speed it up,' he told the media on his first day in office.

Goa's Movement Against SEZs has expressed shock over the statement made by the Secretary of the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Board of Approval for SEZs, Mr G K Pillai, who has accused the Government of Goa of not taking any steps for the last six months, to close down the SEZs and that the Goa Government has even asked for this year's lease rent of land from some developers. In a letter written to the CM today, the convenor of GMAS Matanhy Saldanha suspected that some games are being played and that the government is not displaying its seriousness on the matter.

It is now becoming painfully obvious that apart from announcing that all SEZs were scrapped on New Year's Eve and issuing

With the Commerce Ministry unrelenting on the demand for cancellation of the Goa SEZs, the Centre and the State got into a fresh face-off on Wednesday. "The notified SEZ issue is over with the Government of India,' Commerce Secretary Gopal Pillai told reporters here. But Goa Chief Minister Digamabar Kamat said in Panaji that the state would not go back on its stand and would ask the Centre to review its decision of not denotifying the three Special Economic Zones.

Nationalist Congress Party expressed shock at the stand of the Center on proposed SEZs in Goa and said that it was a direct affront to the sentiments of the people of Goa and termed it as an acid test for the govt in power. In a press note, NCP Spokesman and General Secretary Surendra Furtado said that the attitude of the Under Secretary of the Union Minister for Commerce stating that the SEZ could not be revoked smacked of "money talking.'