Tribal residents belonging to Juang and Bhuyan communities went on dharna in the Keonjhar district collectorate on Sunday protesting large-scale plantation of commercial trees like acacia, eucalyptus

The third all-party meeting held in the Orissa Legislative Assembly on Friday failed to resolve the ongoing impasse in the House as both the ruling BJD and Opposition Congress stuck to their earlier stands.

Congress MLAs in Orissa observed a “black day” on Saturday as the Assembly took up the appropriation bill in the absence of Opposition whose boycott of the house entered the 13th day demanding dismissal of two ministers allegedly involved in multi-crore coal scam.

The Congress on Thursday dubbed the contents of the Orissa home department’s whitepaper as “black lies on white papers” and sought the state government to reveal the truth with regard to the prevailing law and situation.

Amidst tight security, the Orissa government on Tuesday began land acquisition process for the proposed Rs 52,000-crore Posco project near Kujanga in Jagatsinghpur district, even as empowered Central committee dubbed the exercise “illegal.”

Speaker of the Orissa Legislative Assembly Pradip Kumar Amat on Tuesday appeared a little calm and said he would once again convene an all-party meeting to convince the Opposition Congress and BJP to participate in the Assembly business.

Despite inclement weather conditions, India on Monday successfully test-fired indigenously developed interception missile from the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Wheeler Island off Orissa coast, nearly 200 km from here.

Former Orissa women and child development minister Kamala Das was on Saturday sentenced two years rigorous imprisonment for misutilising her position to favour private firm.

The second all-party meeting held on Tuesday to resolve the deadlock in the ongoing Budget Session of the Orissa Legislative Assembly failed as the Opposition Congress remained firm in their demand for ouster of two “tainted” ministers of the Naveen Patnaik government.

Armed with a recent Orissa high court judgment that said the state government did not have a “consistent” mineral policy and it adopted different stands and different points of time with regard to grant of mining lease, the BJP on Tuesday said chief minister Naveen Patnaik had no moral and legal rights to continue in power.