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The Bhumi Adhikar Andolan (BAA), a network of land rights movements across India, will be holding protests all over India against the eviction of forest dwellers on July 22, 2019, ahead of a crucial Supreme Court hearing two days later. The call for action is against the Supreme Court ruling of February 13, 2019 on eviction of millions of Adivasis and other traditional forest-dwelling communities, which was stayed for four months.

Representatives of social movements from 16 states have decided at a national consultation to hold massive long marches and nationwide protests on August 9, the anniversary of Quit India movement, against electronic voting machines being used during the polls. To be bannered “EVMs Quit India! EVM Hatao – Desh Bachao – Ballot Paper Lao!”

The civil rights group, Financial Accountability Network (FAN), in a statement on the golden jubilee year of the nationalisation of banks, has demanded that the Government of India should bring back principles of mass banking, adding, "Strong measures should be taken to recover the non-performing assets (NPAs) of corporates", and willful defaulters should be "declared criminal offenders."
Also wanting bank charges to be withdrawn, the statement regrets, the nationalised banks, which contributed hugely to the economy over the last five decades, "are under attack for the past 25 years under the neo-liberal rule", and multiple efforts are on "to privatise banking sector under the dictates of the global capital."
According to FAN, this has happening even though public sector banks still enjoy the trust of the public at a time when they are facing one of the most severe crises, and the principle of mass banking and catering to the poor and the vuln…

The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), a Mumbai-based human rights organization currently taking up the cause of those who are being "wrongfully" declared foreigners in Assam, has said that "nearly 60 people have lost their lives and their deaths are connected to citizenship related issues" in the state.

Ahmedabad's civil rights organization, Nagrik Sashaktikaran Manch (NSM), has decided to launch 'Improve roads, Save lives' campaign on Sundays starting July 21 across different parts of the city for the next two months, reminding city authorities that the recent Kankaria incident, in which two persons died and 29 injured when the ride collapsed, was only a grim reminder to "the cost of negligence" on the part of those who had assigned business to the firm which operated it.
Jatin Seth, convener, NSM, in a letter to the Ahmedabad municipal commissioner and mayor, said, such innocents may again be lost if cave-ins, pot/pit holes on roads are not taken seriously. "This will happen if the Ahmedabad Municipal Commission (AMC) keeps on ignoring all warnings issued by news media and citizens when there will be heavy rainfall during the current monsoon season", he added.
The campaign, which will cover Sarangpur, Odhav, Rakhial, Sukhramnagar, Maninagar, Da…

A Gujarat-based civil rights organization has demanded that the state assembly, currently in session in Gandhinagar, should come up with Minorities (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, on line with the anti-atrocities laws for scheduled castes and tribes. The decision was taken at a well-attended meeting of the Minority Coordination Committee (MCC) in the state capital.

In a major victory for India’s top fact-checking website, altnews.in, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) – a unit of the Florida-based Poynter Institute “dedicated” to bringing together fact-checkers worldwide to “support a booming crop of fact-checking initiatives by promoting best practices and exchanges in this field” – has set aside a complaint that it is violating IFCN’s nonpartisanship policy. The site altnews.in is a certified member of IFCN.

Suggesting that criminal -- politicians are being accepted in the Indian polity, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and the National Election Watch (NEW), in a fresh analysis of Lok Sabha elections, have said that a whopping 132 (57%) out of 233 winners analysed with declared criminal cases won the polls with a vote share of 50% and above.
Equally significant, says a report prepared by them, is that 115 out of 233 winners with declared criminal cases "won against a runner up with a clean background."  One of them, CR Patil (BJP) from Navsari constituency in Gujarat, won with 52.7 % margin of victory. At the same time, the report says that there are 115 winners with a clean background who won against a runner up with declared criminal cases. Further, the report says, 54 out of 475 crorepati winners won against a non-crorepati runners up. At the same time, there are 48 non-crorepati winners who have won against crorepati runners up. As many as 21 of them have won wi…

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has asked the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the Government of India’s anti-pollution watchdog, to coordinate with State PCBs to make an assessment of compensation to be recovered from polluting units for the period of last five years, taking into account the cost of restoration and cost of damage to the public health and environment and the deterrence element.
The NGT said in an order that the scale of deterrence “may be related to the period and the frequency of defaults”, insisting, “No further industrial activities or expansion be allowed with regard to ‘red’ and ‘orange’ category units till the said areas are brought within the prescribed parameters or till carrying capacity of area is assessed and new units or expansion is found viable having regard to the carrying capacity of the area and environmental norms.”
The NGT order follows the CPCB coming up with a new Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI) for 100 top polluting…