In a bid to pitch India as an uplinking hub, the government on Tuesday announced relaxation in guidelines for compliance for television channels and also made a 30-minute daily public interest broadcast mandatory, mainly for entertainment channels.
Vedanta Group, which was denied mining rights in Orissa's Niyamgiri hills, on Thursdaysaid it will not pull out of the state.
A Supreme Court-constituted panel has asked the Union environment ministry to amend or withdraw the guidelines related to setting up zoos and safaris within tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries to discourage the use of wildlife habitats for tourism activities which are non-site specific.
The fact that one Congress minister and MP nixed a project being promoted by another MP belonging to the same political party is not the only unusual aspect of this episode. This is also a rare instance of the central government acting on the basis of complaints made by a civil society organisation against a large industrial group.
With increasing incidents of electric two-wheelers catching fire, Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said the companies found negligent will be penalised and a recall of all defective vehicles will be ordered after receiving the report of an expert panel that has been formed to enquire into the matter. In a series of tweets, Gadkari said several mishaps involving electric two-wheelers have come to light in the last two months. "We have constituted an expert committee to enquire into these incidents and make recommendations on remedial steps.
'We called on relevant countries to have dialogue and communication as soon as possible and launch a thorough investigation into this incident, strengthen information sharing and establish a notification mechanism in time to ensure the recurrence of such incidents and prevent miscalculation'
The Union ministry of environment and forests on Tuesday put out an 'update' on the integrated steel plant and captive port of Posco India Pvt Ltd, with hints at stopping the Orissa government from transferring 1,253 hectares of forest land to the company for non-compliance of conditions laid down in the final approval of land diversion given on December 29, 2009.
After one stop-work order on the Rs 54,000-crore Posco project, a four-member panel appointed by the Union ministry of environment and forests has dealt a body blow to yet another big-ticket investor in Orissa, the London-based Vedanta Resources Ltd.
The company has obtained the stage-I forest clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests. Subject to fulfilment of the stage-I conditions in terms of mitigation measures, steps will be taken for the next stage of approval, said official sources.
The airline's accounts are yet to be audited.
Five days after the induction of 18 ministers into his cabinet, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Sunday allocated portfolios, keeping Urban Development and 11 other ministries with himself, while giving the crucial Home Department to Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis.
Maharashtra Minister Aaditya Thackeray on Thursday said the process of setting up a single planning authority for Mumbai is underway.
The last hurdle in the way of a second airport for Mumbai, at Navi Mumbai, was cleared by the central government on Monday. The Union ministry of environment and forests issued a notification granting exemption to the second airport from costal regulatory zone regulations, on the lines of an earlier exemption granted for an airport at Port Blair in the Andamans.
A farmers' association of Tirunelveli district had filed the petition claiming that EIA was mandatory for the project to be implemented in 16,000 acres of land, of which around 3,000 acres would be on the sea shore.
The Adani group will invest Rs 10,700 crore into Lucknow airport's expansion so that its annual passenger handling capacity zooms from 4 million passengers per annum (MPPA) to 39 MPPA. The airport's expansion plan received clearance from the Union environment ministry on December 15. However, the plan submitted to the ministry did not mention the deadline for the expansion.
The death of 40 per cent of cheetahs translocated from South Africa and Namibia to the Kuno National Park (KNP) in less than one year doesn't present a "good picture", the Supreme Court said on Thursday, and asked the Centre to not make it a prestige issue and explore the possibility of shifting the animals to different sanctuaries.
Gadgil and the report prepared by the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) headed by him are back in news after over two dozen people lost their lives in landslides and flash floods in the past few days in the hilly regions of Western Ghats in central Kerala districts of Kottayam and Idukki.
The manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use of following single-use plastic, including polystyrene and expanded polystyrene, commodities shall be prohibited with effect from July 1, 2022: ear buds with plastic sticks, plastic sticks for balloons, plastic flags, candy sticks, ice-cream sticks, polystyrene (thermocol) for decoration; plates, cups, glasses, cutlery such as forks, spoons, knives, straw, trays; wrapping or packing films around sweet boxes, invitation cards, and cigarette packets, plastic or PVC banners less than 100 micron, stirrers, the notification read. The provisions will not apply to commodities made of compostable plastic, the notification said.
The party had quit the NDA citing differences with the BJP's Tamil Nadu unit.
The overall Air Quality Index (AQI) of Delhi stood at 398 at 11 am, worsening from 357 at 4 pm on Friday. It was 354 on Thursday, 271 on Wednesday, 302 on Tuesday and 312 on Monday (Diwali).
The Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal, an autonomous institute under the Union ministry of environment and forests, invites applications for its post-graduate programme in forestry management.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Bali on Monday for the G20 Summit and bilateral meetings on its sidelines with key leaders attending this annual conference of the world's major economies.
After a political tug of war on poaching, Rajasthan government has permitted Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the disappearance of tigers in the Sariska sanctuary since October last year.
The executive enclave will house the new Prime Minister's Office, Cabinet Secretariat, India House and the National Security Council Secretariat.
'The Government of India should start a dialogue with the people of Ladakh, but the trouble is they are not willing to listen to our grievances.'
A dry run for COVID-19 vaccination will be conducted by all state and union territory administrations on January 2 to test the linkages between planning and implementation and to identify the challenges, the Centre said on Thursday.
The Delhi State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) has granted environmental clearance to the proposal for the construction of the 'Executive Enclave' which will house the new Prime Minister's Office and Cabinet Secretariat.
The Delhi government will identify single-use plastic littering hotspots and the entry points of such items into water bodies and drains by October 31 this year, according to a draft action plan for the elimination of the environmentally hazardous products.
Stung by the "pesticides report" on colas by CSE, Pepsi on Friday filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court seeking to restrain the NGO from publishing the report, while asking for an independent evaluation of the "damaging" report.
Ahead of the 2023-24 Union Budget, the thinking at the top level of the central government is clear: Gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 6-6.5 per cent is a comfortable enough target for FY24 and the focus should be on fiscal consolidation to ensure that the sovereign cost of borrowing does not become prohibitively expensive in a high-interest rate environment, according to people in the know. Those aware of deliberations between the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the Ministry of Finance said while the Budget would look to strike a balance between infrastructure investment and welfare schemes, it is unlikely to be populist, though it will be the last full-year Budget before the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Incidentally, 6-6.5 per cent GDP growth is what the upcoming 2022-23 Economic Survey is expected to project for FY24.
The environment ministry till May 2014 (still under UPA) ordered that cases like Vedanta's expansion plans need to consult people. But in December 2014, the NDA government reversed this position and in March 2015 the environment ministry extended Vedanta's environmental clearance till December 2018. This it did even while the question of the need for public hearing by projects in different kinds of industrial parks was being contested in the courts. This allowed the company to carry out construction.
It is developing ash parks at Varanasi, Raipur, Pune and Cuttack, to make it available to ash-based product manufacturing units at these centres. It recently signed an agreement with NHAI for supply of ash for use in road construction.
Fifteen Cabinet ministers and 28 Ministers of State were sworn-in by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Wednesday evening.
Anil Antony announced his resignation via a tweet in which he said that he was getting "intolerant calls" to retract his tweet against the documentary and the "wall of hate/abuses" on Facebook over the same issue have prompted him to take the decision.
For the past one week, Modi has been holding in-person meetings with Union ministers apparently to take stock of the work done by the government in the last two years and to discuss various issues.
Several top political leaders, including Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, have also tested positive for COVID-19 recently.
Patel was administered the oath as the 18th chief minister by Governor Acharya Devvrat at a function held at the Helipad Ground near the new Secretariat.
The armed forces can undertake infrastructure development even in ecologically fragile areas which are declared "strategic areas" by the government.
A bench of justices BR Gavai and Sanjay Karol told the Centre that from reports of experts and articles, it appears that KNP does not seem to be sufficient for such large number of cheetahs and the Union government may consider shifting them to other sanctuaries.