Madhya Pradesh Archives - mines minerals & PEOPLE

‘Misuse’ of PESA Act in Ghar Wapsi of Chhattisgarh Tribal Christians: Report

February 21, 2023

NEWS Click | Kashif Kakvi | 21 Feb 2023

A fact-finding team finds abuse of the Act to banish more than 1,000 tribal Christians from their villages because they refused to embrace Hinduism.

Bhopal: The implementation of the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, (PESA) by Chhattisgarh last August has allegedly become a tool for ‘Ghar Wapsi’ of tribals.

Abusing the Act’s clause (d), under the influence of Hindu extremist groups, Gram Sabhas banished more than 1,000 tribal Christians from their villages because they refused to embrace Hinduism, according to a fact-finding team.

Modi govt’s proposed geoheritage bill protects sites capturing Earth’s history. What it means

January 5, 2023

The Print | Jan 05, 2023

Geoheritage Sites & Geo-relics (Preservation & Maintenance) Bill lets govt declare a site to be of national importance, with 100m area around it ‘prohibited’ & 200m area ‘restricted’.

New Delhi: India’s rich geological monuments that capture the Earth’s tumultuous, evolving history in the form of rocks, sediment, and fossils, are at the grave risk of being wiped out, experts have said, highlighting the need for a law to protect these from erosion.

The warning has not gone unheeded, with the Narendra Modi government putting out a draft bill last month, for the preservation and maintenance of India’s geological heritage sites and relics. The draft Geoheritage Sites and Geo-relics (Preservation and Maintenance) Bill, 2022, published for “public consultation” by the Ministry of Mines on 15 December, aims to protect and preserve these sites for “geological studies, education, research, and for future generations as it is a non-renewable asset”.