Inside an agate unit By Our Representative Poonabhai Ramabhai Parmar, 59, has become the fourth victim of the deadly silicosis disease -- which is rampant in and around Khambhat town of Central Gujarat -- this year. Parmar breathed his last on February 25 night. Large number of locals joined his funeral on February 26 morning. Informing about his death, Jagdish Patel, senior social activist of the state-based NGO People’s Training and Research Centre (PTRC), Vadodara, said, “Parmar worked in a textile mill in Khambhat till 1994, and when mill was closed he turned to agate polishing. He was diagnosed of silicosis at Sri Krishna Hospital, Karamsad, in December 2012. He was bedridden for the few months.”

By Our Representative The Awaaz Network and Monitoring Group of the United Kingdom organized a controversial meeting at UK Parliament urging parliamentarians to “bring Modi to justice.” A statement issued following the meeting said, among those who agreed with this view "included" members of Parliament John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) and Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North). This apart, the meeting received messages from British barrister and human rights campaigner and Mike Wood, MP for Balley.

By Our Representative Pressure on Gujarat’s powerful Adani Group -- which is contracted along with few other top international companies to develop one of world’s biggest coalmines in Queensland province of Australia -- does not seem to be abating. Following well-known environmental group Greenpeace’s campaign against coalmining in the region, at least two companies have withdrawn from the Abbot Point coal port. The latest to withdraw is Lend Lease, world’s leading fully integrated property and infrastructure solutions company.

Women protest against the weir next to the Narmada river By Our Representative The National Green Tribunal (NGT), India’s powerful quasi-judicial environmental watchdog, has agreed to a Gujarat government plea for “more time” to replay to the case filed by senior environmentalist Rohit Prajapati demanding immediate stay on the construction of Garudeshwar weir, which he has alleged is being constructed without complying with the environmental protection Act, 1985, not to talk of going into formalities such as taking a nod of the Narmada Control Authority (NCA). The weir is proposed as part of the effort to turn downstream areas of Narmada dam into a tourism spot, even as providing water to industries in the belt around Ankaleshwar and Bharuch.

By Our Representative As a step to move closer to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), former BJP chief minister Suresh Mehta has declared that he will not side with one of Gujarat’s topmost Hindutva votaries, Gordhan Zadaphia, who has decided to rejoin the Bharatiya Janata Party a little over a year after he became part of the Sangh Parivar rebels to form the Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP). Perhaps the most important benefactors of Vishwa Hindu Hindu Parishad’s leader and Hindutva extremist Pravin Togadia, and state home minister during the 2002 riots, Zadaphia till now had been critical of Gujarat chief minister as a “fake Hindutva leader.”

Zadaphia By Our Representative Is Rashtriya Swayam Sangh (RSS) making desperate, all-out attempt to ensure that its leaders, including RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat, are not implicated in the terrorist attack on Samjhauta Express, which took place on February 18, 2007? Being severally quoted as a glaring example of “saffron terror”, in which 68 persons were killed, a top BJP insider has told Counterview that RSS suspects a “file is pending” in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs which links the blast to some of the top RSS men. “Following the revelation that the UPA government may move to implicate RSS men, Bhagwat and others want to do everything in their capacity to remove Congress from power”, the insider said.

By Our Representative A well-attended seminar organised by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Ahmedabad, in association with the Wada Na Todo Abhiyan, a national advocacy group campaigning to include social justice issues in political parties' electoral agenda, has reached the conclusion that there is an urgent need to campaign for building a mechanism to ensure that the existing legal provisions of social protection are implemented, and the focus should be on the unorganized sector. “Several laws guaranteeing people’s needs exist, but they are rarely implemented”, CSJ director Gagan Sethi, a human rights activist summed up the main sentiment.

By Our Representative Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's "Chai pe charcha", which began in Gujarat towns on February 12 evening, has made national headlines. It seeks to counter Congress propaganda, which had sought, at one point, to ridicule that Modi, during his youth, worked as a boy selling tea at a tea stall.

By Our Representative Raising strong objection to the Environmental Public Hearing (EPH) proposed by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) in five Gujarat districts -- Valsad, Navsari, Surat, Bharuch and Vadodara -- to be held between February 18 and 28 for constructing the Express Highway between Vadodara and Mumbai, senior Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS) activist Krishnakant has said in a letter to M Veeerappa Moily, Union minister for forests and environment, that it is being carried out in violation of the basic norms of the Environmental Protection Act 1986 and Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006.

An anti-Adani poster in Australia By Our Representative Is Gujarat’s powerful Adani Group thinking of withdrawing from one of its most ambitious international ventures in Australia, the $10 billion Carmichael coal mining project in Queensland, following opposition from the top environmental group Greenpeace? Citing “Hunkering Down; Waiting for Resolution on Adani Power”, a report prepared by investment banker Morgan Stanley, well-informed sources in Australia are learnt to have reached the conclusion that this may well happen sooner rather than later. The Morgan Stanley report specifically says, “While the company expects the environmental clearance to come through in F2H14, it does not plan to spend money on developing the mine until coal prices rise from current levels” (click HERE to download the full report).

By Our Representative  Gujarat’s total debts are set to touch Rs 1.85 lakh crore by March-end 2014, highest ever. The latest “State Finances: A Study of Budgets of 2013-14”, released last month end, has said that the state’s total debts – which include internal debt taken from the market and other funding sources as also different types of liabilities – has said that the state’s total debts would rise by about Rs 21,000 crore in a year, from Rs 1.64 lakh crore last year as of March 2013. A rise of 12.87 per cent in a year, this is the highest increase in the debts in the last three years.