Narmada oustees' long-pending complaints: Apex court asks Gujarat, MP, Maharashtra to act urgently

By A Representative
The Supreme Court’s Social Justice Bench has directed Grievances Authorities (GRAs) of three states – Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra -- to urgently dispose of all the pending complaints of Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) oustees lying before it by February 28, 2015. The apex court direction came follow another order on January 9 to the three state governments to immediately appoint judges for all the GRAs, whose primary job is to look into complaints of the oustees. Madhya Pradesh has to appoint five judges, Gujarat two and Maharashtra one.
At the same time, the apex court has asked the Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat governments to file compliance reports by March 10 with regard to about 3,000 complaints the GRAs have already looked into. The apex court will further hear on the petition, filed by anti-Narmada dam Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), on March 13.
Meanwhile, complying by the apex court order of January 9, the Madhya Pradesh government filed an affidavit conveying appointment of Justice (retired) AK Sharma, Justice (retired) SS Dwivedi, Justice (retired) Indrani Dutta, Justice (retired) IS Shrivastava and Justice (retired) GD Saxena. All five are retired judges of the High Court. The Gujarat and Maharashtra governments also committed to appoint judges for their GRAs.
The apex court directive came following a hearing of the applications filed by oustees from various affected villages and the NBA challenging the recent decision of the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) of June 12, 2014 to raise the height of the dam from 121.92 metres to 138.68 metres as unconstitutional and in violation of the Narmada Tribunal Award.
The NBA argued, the decision was also violative of the previous judgments of the Supreme Court, mandating that any increase in the dam height shall only be carried out after rehabilitation of all the oustees was completed. The applications challenged the NCA’s claims that there would be no “additional submergence’.
Pleading for the oustees, NBA counsel Sanjay Parikh informed the court that the rehabilitation of thousands of oustees was pending, while the dam height was being increased and construction has commenced, leading to grave violation of the fundamental rights of the oustees. He said that the procedure for dam height had been “grossly violated” by the Environment and Rehabilitation Sub Groups of the NCA and the NCA itself.
Parikh also questioned the legality of the ongoing dam work, as it has already been proved that the conditional clearance to raise the dam height from 110.64 to 121.92 metres has been violated and thousands of oustees, already thrown in the submergence zone, have not yet been rehabilitated and have been defrauded by a nexus of officials and agents, whose acts are being inquired into by a Judicial Commission in Madhya Pradesh.
Applicant-in-person, Medha Patkar submitted that there are already hundreds of orders of the GRAs, where compliance is pending, and oustees have already faced impacts of “unlawful submergence”. She pointed out that the NCA’s Annual Report of 2013 had already admitted more than 2,300 families are yet to get land in Madhya Pradesh. At the same time, more than 1,000 adivasi oustees in Maharashtra and a few hundred in Gujarat are without land, civic amenities.

Comments

Lata Mangeshkar, a Dalit from Devdasi family, 'refused to sing a song' about Ambedkar

By Pramod Ranjan* An artist is known and respected for her art. But she is equally, or even more so known and respected for her social concerns. An artist's social concerns or in other words, her worldview, give a direction and purpose to her art. History remembers only such artists whose social concerns are deep, reasoned and of durable importance. Lata Mangeshkar (28 September 1929 – 6 February 2022) was a celebrated playback singer of the Hindi film industry. She was the uncrowned queen of Indian music for over seven decades. Her popularity was unmatched. Her songs were heard and admired not only in India but also in Pakistan, Bangladesh and many other South Asian countries. In this article, we will focus on her social concerns. Lata lived for 92 long years. Music ran in her blood. Her father also belonged to the world of music. Her two sisters, Asha Bhonsle and Usha Mangeshkar, are well-known singers. Lata might have been born in Indore but the blood of a famous Devdasi family...

The soundtrack of resistance: How 'Sada Sada Ya Nabi' is fueling the Iran war

By Syed Ali Mujtaba* The Persian track “ Sada Sada Ya Nabi ye ” by Hossein Sotoodeh has taken the world by storm. This viral media has cut across linguistic barriers to achieve cult status, reaching over 10 million views. The electrifying music and passionate rendition by the Iranian singer have resonated across the globe, particularly as the high-intensity military conflict involving Iran entered its second month in March 2026.

'Batteries now cheap enough for solar to meet India's 90% demand': Expert quotes Ember study

By A Representative Shankar Sharma, Power & Climate Policy Analyst, has urged India’s top policymakers to reconsider the financial and ecological implications of the country’s energy transition strategy in light of recent global developments. In a letter dated April 10, 2026, addressed to the Union Ministers of Finance, Power, New & Renewable Energy, Environment, Forest & Climate Change, and the Vice Chair of NITI Aayog, with a copy to the Prime Minister, Sharma highlighted concerns over India’s ambitious plans for coal gasification and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).

Manufacturing, services: India's low-skill, middle-skill labour remains underemployed

By Francis Kuriakose* The Indian economy was in a state of deceleration well before Covid-19 made its impact in early 2020. This can be inferred from the declining trends of four important macroeconomic variables that indicate the health of the economy in the last quarter of 2019.

Incarceration of Prof Saibaba 'revives' the question: What is crime, who is criminal?

By Kunal Pant* In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”

Food security? Gujarat govt puts more than 5 lakh ration cards in the 'silent' category

By Pankti Jog* A new statistical report uploaded by the Gujarat government on the national food security portal shows that ensuring food security for the marginalized community is still not a priority of the state. The statistical report, uploaded on December 24, highlights many weaknesses in implementing the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in state.

Why Indo-Pak relations have been on 'knife’s edge' , hostilities may remain for long

By Utkarsh Bajpai* The past few decades have seen strides being made in all aspects of life – from sticks and stones to weaponry. The extreme case of this phenomenon has been nuclear weapons. The menace caused by nuclear weapons in the past is unforgettable. Images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1945 come to mind, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities.

Subaltern voices go digital: Three Indian projects rewriting history from the ground up

By A Representative A new wave of digital humanities (DH) work in India is shifting the focus away from university classrooms and English-language scholarship, instead prioritizing multilingual, community-driven archives that amplify subaltern voices . According to a review published in the Journal of Asian Studies , projects such as the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), the Oral History Narmada archive , and the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre are redefining how the country remembers its past — often without government funding or institutional support.

Beyond Lata: How Asha Bhosle redefined the female voice with her underrated versatility

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* The news of iconic Asha Bhosle’s ‘untimely’ demise has shocked music lovers across the country. Asha Tai was 92 years young. Normally, people celebrate a passing at this age, but Asha Bhosle—much like another legend, Dev Anand—never made us feel she was growing old. She was perhaps the most versatile artist in Bombay cinema. Hailing from a family devoted to music, Asha’s journey to success and fame was not easy. Her elder sister, Lata Mangeshkar, had already become the voice of women in cinema, and most contemporaries like Shamshad Begum, Suraiya, and Noor Jehan had slowly faded into oblivion. Frankly, there was no second or third to Lata Mangeshkar; she became the first—and perhaps the only—choice for music directors and all those who mattered in filmmaking. Asha started her musical journey at age 10 with a Marathi film, but her first break in Hindustani cinema came with the film "Chunariya" (1948). Though she was not the first choice of ...

Search This Blog