Manmohan for environmental clearance sans 'Permit Raj'

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PTI / The Hindu / NEW DELHI, July 24, 2011.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (right) and Chief Justice of India S. H. Kapadia during the valedictory session of the seminar 'Global Environment and Disaster Management: Law and Society', in New Delhi, on Sunday. Photo: Ramesh Sharma.

In the backdrop of the controversy over environmental clearances to major projects, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday said an independent regulator would soon revamp the process and help protect ecology without bringing back ‘the hated licence permit raj’.

“We hope to establish an independent regulator - the National Environment Appraisal and Monitoring Authority soon. This authority could lead to a complete change in the process of granting environmental clearances. Staffed by dedicated professionals, it will work on a full time basis to evolve better and more objective standards of scrutiny,” Dr. Singh said.

He was speaking at a seminar on ‘Global Environment and Disaster Management: Law and Society’ in New Delhi.

Significant move

The move to establish this authority appears to have come in the wake of stalling of several industrial and mining projects after the Environment Ministry, till recently led by Jairam Ramesh, had refused to clear the project.

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Green India Mission

The UPA-II government has a target for greening 10 million hectares of forest land to increase incomes of the poor through a national Green India Mission.

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Growth and environment

The Prime Minister said till now the public felt there is a trade-off between economic growth and environmental sustainability but now growth accommodates environmental concerns.

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Full Story at,

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2290316.ece?homepage=true

US BIGAMY, UTAH's MIDDLE AGE PRACTICE: Solid Challenge to Utah's Law!

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By JONNY BONNER  / http://www.courthousenews.com / Thursday, July 14, 2011.

SALT LAKE CITY (CN) - The stars of the "reality" TV show "Sister Wives" want to return to Utah, and have challenged the state's bigamy law in Federal Court. Kody Brown is married to just one of his four "wives" and says Utah cannot prosecute them "solely because they call themselves a family in the eyes of their church" and live as a "plural family." 
     

Brown and his so-called sister wives - Meri, Janelle and Christine Brown, and Robyn Sullivan - are represented by Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Kody Brown is married only to Meri. They claim Utah's bigamy law, which chased them to Nevada in January violates the First and 14th Amendments.

Brown uprooted his family, which includes 16 children and stepchildren, from Lehi, Utah to a Las Vegas suburb after their show on the TLC network made their family situation plain to see.

Brown says he was "civilly married" to Meri Brown and "spiritually married" to the other three women. "In January 2010, he and the co-plaintiffs fled Utah for fear that Utah law enforcement officials would prosecute them under the state's criminal bigamy stature for maintaining a plural family," the complaint states.

The move was far from ideal, the family says, and they're ready to return to the Beehive State. They say they want to rejoin relatives and the fundamentalist Apostolic United Brethren Church, a Mormon offshoot based in Salt Lake City.

"While they would like to return to Utah, the Browns fear that they will be arrested and separated from their children if they do so," according to the complaint.

Full Story at,

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/07/14/38150.htm

FROM JAMMU & KASHMIR: The big Kashmir panchayat hoax!

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Balraj Puri is senior journalist and political commentator based in Jammu.

The state seems to show a lack of trust in the way it has amended its panchayati laws, empowering itself instead of passing power on to the people

Illustration: Vikram Nongmaithem

JAMMU AND Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has constituted a high powered committee headed by Chief Secretary Madhav Lal for formulating a roadmap for the transfer of vital functions and finances to the panchayats, to which elections are being held from April 17. The elections are being conducted in several phases and are yet to be completed. Why was this done before announcing the elections? Why is the roadmap not publicly debated or at least discussed in the assembly, whose session has just ended? Till the roadmap is released, we have to keep our figures crossed. As it is, the present Panchayati Raj Act is merely an instrument of further centralisation of power rather than a genuine measure of empowerment of the people. Here, I raise some questions that the high-powered committee should consider.

The previous panchayati election was held in 2001.There was hectic discussion between political parties, including the coalition parties in the state government, on reforms in Panchayati Raj before the election. The Congress party and the opposition parties of Jammu had demanded that the new panchayats should be formed after Jammu and Kashmir adopts the 73rd amendment to the Indian constitution, which would have made panchayats a genuine instrument of decentralisation of power. The 73rd amendment as such is not that important. The state, after studying its working in other states of country, could have adopted even a better law than elsewhere if the objective was the empowerment of the people. The J&K assembly enacted a law to constitute an election commission to conduct the election. But, by that time, the code of conduct had been enforced, which means the commission would work from the next elections. The coming election would be conducted by the election department of the state government.

Full Story at,

http://tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=Ws23062011Kashmir.asp