JAIPUR: The Jal Mahal land lease agreement dispute reached the Supreme Court on Thursday, as was widely anticipated.

The private company, the Jal Mahal Resorts Pvt Ltd that was to lose the lease after the Rajasthan High Court declared the agreement illegal, filed a special leave petition (SLP) before the apex court, challenging the verdict passed on May 17. The SLP was mentioned before a division bench of Justice Deepak Verma and Justice SJ Mukhopadhaya that directed that the case to be listed again on Friday.

Relies on Lokayukta report while filing reply in Supreme Court

The State government has washed its hands of a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the alleged role of three former chief ministers — S M Krishna, N Dharam Singh and H D Kumaraswamy —in illegal mining, and decided to leave it to the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) to take an appropriate decision in this regard.

Recommending scrapping of two controversial hydro-power projects in Karnataka and Kerala that had run into difficulty due to opposition from environmentalists, the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) has suggested setting up of a statutory authority to protect the Ghats.

The report of the panel, headed by Madhav Gadgil, formerly with the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, has called for cancellation of Karnataka's Gundia and Kerala's Athirapally hydro-projects, and gradual phasing out of mining activities in ecologically highly-sensitive areas of Goa by 2016.

Chandigarh: SC orders bar on razing of any construction which has come up till May 21. In an immediate relief for those facing demolition of their buildings/ constructions in the Sukhna catchment area, the Supreme Court today ordered a stay on the demolition orders. Making it clear that the Administration authorities will not demolish any construction which has come up till May 21, a division bench of the Apex Court today also ruled that no further construction will be allowed to come up in the catchment area till further orders.

Dharwad-based non-government organisation, Samaj Parivartan Samudaya (SPS), which is the main petitioner in the public interest litigation (writ petition No. 562 of 2009) on illegal mining in Karnataka at the Supreme Court, has alleged that D K Shivakumar, former Karnataka minister, was involved in illegal mining activity.

The NGO is filing an interlocutory application in the Supreme Court on serious illegalities, irregularities and criminalities indulged in during the period 2000-2005 by Shivakumar and eight iron ore trading companies.

A team of TN public works department (PWD) engineers will visit Mullaperiyar Thursday to fill holes dug by experts to study structural safety of the dam.

Principal secretary (PWD) M. Saikumar said the work would be completed in four days starting Thursday. The experts appointed by a Supreme Court-constituted empowered committee (EC), which studied safety of the 116-year-old structure, reportedly dug seven six-inch wide and 130-190-foot deep holes across the 1,200-foot main dam.

Every third malnourished child in the State is from the Hyderabad-Karnataka region, reveals a study.

Bidar, Gulbarga, Yadgir, Raichur, and Koppal districts that comprise the Hyderabad-Karnataka region presents a shocking picture. Whereas the situation in Raichur is far worse than sub-Saharan countries and our own BIMARU states, the study notes. The HUNGaMA (Hunger and Malnutrition) report of the Naandi Foundation provides reliable estimates of the prevalence of severe malnutrition in 112 districts in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan.

The representatives of five organisations of Bhopal gas survivors have urged the Group of Ministers on Bhopal to take a long term view while dealing with the issue of hazardous waste and toxic contamination. The GOM will meet on May 21 to discuss issue of disposal of 350MT of toxic waste of Union Carbide as directed by the Supreme Court. The SC has listed the matter for May 28 as it is awaiting decision of GOM on disposal of this waste.

Almost six years and Rs. 414 crore later, Delhi and Haryana are still wrangling over the Munak canal and the water that it was supposed to bring to the Capital. The impediments that got in the way included environmental clearances, monetary disagreements and bickering over how much water Haryana is supposed to release for Delhi.

The latest stand-off is over the release of 80 MGD of water that Delhi claims it should get apart from what is being released and Haryana's demand for the release of Rs.106 crore.

In a move to address the lack of strategic roads abutting the India-China frontier, India will bring in a legal provision to do away with self-created hurdles which are holding back progress on the much-needed roads used for movement of troops and equipment. Even as India struggles to construct roads along the India-China frontier, such desolate places in eastern Ladakh have been designated as wildlife reserves.