Sudha Bharadwaj with her daughter Maaysha The family members and friends* of Sudha Bharadwaj, who was arrested two years ago in the Bhima Koregaon Conspiracy Case, have described the denial of bail to the top human rights lawyer and labour leader by a division bench of the Bombay High Court on August 28 “as gross injustice.”

Does the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) appear not too keen to ensure postponement of the proposed environmental public hearings (EPH) of Gujarat’s top petroleum refinery, owned by Nayara Energy (formerly Essar-owned), seeking its unit’s expansion in two of Gujarat districts, Jamnagar and Devbhumi Dwarka? 

Prominent Right to Information (RTI)  activists , including two former chief information commissioners Wajahat Habibulla and Shailesh Gandhi, and Magsaysay awardee and author Aruna Roy, even as seeking “immediate revocation” of an FIR filed against Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) RTI activist Sajad Hussain Mir, have regretted that the harassment has taken place at a time when the year-old Union territory is directly under the control of the Government of India.

Well-known social activist Sandeep Pandey has taken strong exception to alleged targeting of one Nasir Pathan, 42, resident of Chandana village in Kheda district, Gujarat, by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists by taking up an “emotional” issue like cow slaughter. Pandey in a statement has demanded from the authorities to take action against people who abuse religious agenda to serve their political and personal interests.

2002 riot victims at rehab colony in Nandasan, Mehsana The Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), Gujarat, has demanded that the Government of India should urgently formulate a comprehensive policy for rehabilitation of the victims of communal violence, pointing out that the 2002 Gujarat riots are a major example of persecution on the basis of religion in India.

  The Government of India (GoI) may have allocated Rs 235 crore since 2016-17 for cleaning up three of Gujarat’s major rivers, Sabarmati, which flows through Ahmedabad, and Mindola and Tapi, both South Gujarat rivers. However, Mahesh Pandya, director, Paryavaran Mitra, has alleged that despite the allocation, things have failed to improve, with Sabarmati, especially in the downstream, remaining as polluted as before.

Five gender rights organizations -- Pragatisheel Mahila Sangathan, Delhi;​ National Federation of Indian Women, Delhi Unit; Centre for Struggling Women; Saheli; and Swastik Mahila Samiti -- describing the recent Aaam Aadmi Party (AAP) statement that the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) movement in Shaheen Bagh was  scripted  by the BJP as “atrocious”, have said that this suggests AAP is not a gender just party.

The Farmers Action Group (FAG), a Gujarat-based network, in a representation to the chairman, Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB), taking strong exception to GPCB letters dated July 15 and 27 to the farmers of seven villages of Vadodara district seeking to seal their borewells, has wondered why is the top state government agency refusing to take a similar step against polluting industrial units in the region.

Environmentalists Rohit Prajapati and Krishnakant of the Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS) have alleged that at just one location alone, the planned Bullet Train corridor between Ahmedabad and Mumbai wouldn’t just be razing to the ground not those trees which have been listed, but also several other rare trees well. 

In a sharp rebuttal to a full-page advertorial  published  in the daily “Business Standard” (July 29), more than 160  academics, activists and NGOs , many of them working in the environmental field, have said that the content the advertorial by the all-India pesticides and chemical fertilizer industry body, Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI), is “malafide as it seeks to promote harmful agricultural practices detrimental to public interest.”

Even as welcoming the Government of India’s (GoI’s) National Education Policy (NEP),  released  on July 29, for reiterating GoI’s five decades old  commitment  to spend 6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education and presenting a “more humanistic” vision of education with special emphasis on mother tongue, a high-profile NGO, Oxfam India, has objected to what it has called “subtle shift towards market-based approach towards education.”