Two Orissa villages oppose Posco

NEW DELHI: The Orissa government bats for it, the PMO is in favour and environment minister Jairam Ramesh has obliged, but the Rs 54,000-crore Posco project has found two difficult adversaries —the villages of Dhinkia and Gobindpur.

The two villages have written to Ramesh, saying they have not agreed to the takeover of forest land for the integrated steel plant under the Forest Rights Act and complained the Act has not been implemented in their lands. This creates a legal impediment for Orissa to give the assurance Ramesh had sought as a precondition to the forest clearance.

Under the Forest Rights Act, consent of the affected village council is mandatory before forest lands can be transferred to any project developer by the state government.

Under the Act, all claims in the forest lands by traditional forest dwellers — tribals and others — have to be settled and the permission of the village council taken before such rights are bought out by the state in favour of any project developer.

With the PMO leaning hard on him to clear the biggest single FDI project, Ramesh overrode his own order which requires such village council permissions on environment ministry records. The environment minister instead left it for the Orissa government to provide an assurance that all rights under FRA had been settled. Under the law, the state government can only give such an assurance once it has permission from the affected village councils.

Now, the two villages have written to the Union minister, stating their rights have not been settled even though they filed their applications for individual and community rights in the forests marked out for the project.

The bulk of the 1,253 hectares of forest land falls within the boundary of these two villages in Jagatsinghpur district.

The letters of complaint received by the ministry come along with copies of the village council resolutions dating back to February 2010 where the villagers had rejected the proposal and re-asserted their rights to the contentious forest patch.

They are also accompanied by affidavits of the sarpanch of Dhinkia, stating they have not received any information, documents or records from the state government regarding the implementation of FRA in the area.

Dhinkia has been the hub of protests against the Korean steel giant and has remained blockaded for long. The N C Saxena panel on FRA as well as the Meena Gupta committee specifically reviewing Posco had found rights of the non-ST population in the area had not been settled. Consequently, the environment ministry`s statutory Forest Advisory Committee had recommended rejection of the forest clearance to the project for violation of FRA. Ramesh had instead preferred to let Orissa come back to it with an assurance, which will now be difficult to prove.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Over 1 lakh phones are tapped every year

NEW DELHI: Some startling figures tumbled out on rampant phone tapping in the country when telecom service provider Reliance Communications told the Supreme Court on Monday that the authorities had asked it to tap 1.51 lakh phone numbers in a five-year span between 2006 and 2010.

This works out to an average of over 30,000 telephone interceptions every year by a single service provider on the orders of various law enforcing agencies. Or, over 82 telephones were intercepted every day by a single service provider.

Reliance is the second-largest service provider with a subscriber base of 12.57 crore as in 2010. The biggest service provider, Bharti Airtel, had 15.25 crore subscribers in 2010, while Vodafone's subscriber base was just a shade lower than Reliance's at 12.43 crore. State-owned BSNL came fourth with 8.67 crore subscribers.

If Reliance's ratio of phones tapped to the number of its subscribers were to be taken as representative and applied to other service providers, it is a fair assumption that government agencies were tapping more than one lakh phones every year.

In Delhi alone, Reliance tapped a total of 3,588 phones in 2005 when the teledensity was low compared to today. It also included Amar Singh's number which was put under surveillance — allegedly on a forged letter from Delhi Police.

Four days back, a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly had expressed concern over the large number of interceptions being ordered by the agencies and the "grave danger" this posed to the citizen's right to privacy.

In an affidavit tendered by senior advocate Ram Jethmalani before the bench, Reliance Communications said: "The total number of interceptions in 2005 in respect of Delhi Service Area were 3,588. There were about 1.51 lakh number of cases for monitoring/interception during the period 2006-10 in all India."

Responding to the court's observation that no service provider worth its salt would intercept a phone based on a purported communication full of grammatical and spelling mistakes, Reliance said most of the genuine interception orders were identical to the now known forged letter as far as spelling and grammatical mistakes were concerned. It cited a genuine interception order of February 1, 2011, received from the Delhi Police to make its point.

After detailing the precautions it had taken, including writing to the authorities to authenticate the letter asking for interception of Amar Singh's phone, Reliance said it received no response, yet it was duty bound under a bona fide perception of the letter to continue interception for 15 days.

"A bare perusal of various letters sent by Ranjit Narayan (then Joint Commissioner of Delhi Police) and R Narayanswami (then Delhi home secretary) show that the letters dated October 22, 2005 and November 9, 2005 (both purportedly forged ones) were similar to other letters received from them," Reliance said while claiming its innocence in the interception controversy.

It said request for surveillance of a telephone from the law enforcement agencies could not be postponed based on spelling mistakes in the communication from agencies as it called for immediate action "for safety of general public at large and in the interest of the nation." It added: "Postponing compliance on the ground of inconsequential mistakes like spelling errors may conceivably lead to a serious terrorist attack and the blame may fall on us."

"The service providers are also required to provide assistance to law enforcement agencies as per the licence condition. Any violation of it can lead to a penalty of Rs 50 crore," Reliance said.

It said service providers do not keep a record of conversations taped from a phone under surveillance. Reliance Communication said it did not have the technology to record the conversations and that there was no law mandating the service provider to record the conversations and submit it to the law enforcement agencies.

Source:  timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Malaysia tiger park plan attacked

The number of tigers has fallen from 3,000 to 500 in the last 50 years Conservationists have attacked a Malaysian plan to set up a tiger park on the resort island of Penang. Wildlife groups say the park would violate the government's pledge to double the population of wild tigers. Penang's government recently proposed creating a 100 acre (40 hectare) tiger park to attract tourists. Illegal hunting and destruction of the tigers' jungle habitat has reduced Malaysia's wild tiger population from 3,000 to 500 in the last 50 years. The Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers said the country already had 40 zoos and that maintaining them was posing a challenge to authorities. In a letter to the Penang government, the alliance said that tiger reserves in China similar to the Malaysian proposal were little more than farms to breed tigers. They have been implicated in the illegal trade in tiger parts, the alliance said. It also pointed to the expense of maintaining tigers in captivity. The group said the project would violate a federal government commitment to protect jungle corridors in order to double the wild tiger population to 1,000 by 2020.

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Afghanistan: Three dead in Kabul 'suicide attack

At least three people have been killed in what police say was a suicide attack in the Afghan capital Kabul.

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