1993 – district collector, Ratnagiri, Maharashtra directed Sterlite to suspend construction work following year-long agitation by local people.

1994 – Sterlite enters Tamil Nadu. NOC given by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) carried a condition that the factory should be located 25 kms from the Gulf of Mannar.

1995 – TNPCB authorizes Sterlite to commence construction though it violated the set condition and the plant was built within 14 kms of Gulf of Mannar. Agitating locals were driven out by the police.

IN yet another act of brutality and terror of the RSS, one more CPI(M) worker was killed on May 7, in Mahe, a part of Puducherry state near northern  border of Kannur district.  Comrade Kannippoyil Babu, former councilor of Mahe municipality and CPI(M) Mahe local committee member was gruesomely murdered by the RSS goons.

Comrade Babu had escaped a murder attempt last year. The brutal killing occurred soon after the culmination of an RSS armed training camp in Koothuparamba near Mahe. 

Protesting the excessive hike in third-party insurance of transport vehicles, the All India Road Transport Workers Federation (AIRTWF) held a dharna in front of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) headquarters in Hyderabad on May 14.

The AIRTWF, with the support of the Lorry Owners’ Association of Tamil Nadu and Telangana and Driving Schools’ Association of Tamil Nadu, submitted a memorandum to the chairman of IRDA, demanding the withdrawal of enhanced premiums.

HUNDREDS of CPI(M) activists gathered at the office of Resident Commissioner of the government of West Bengal on May 16, 2018, to protest against the murderous attack  on CPI(M) cadres in the state. In the recently held panchayat elections more than 40 people were killed. Among them large number were from minorities, dalit and tribal communities. Addressing the gathering, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat said that this Mamta Brand Murder of Democracy has two aspects.

THE All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU), in a statement issued on May 14, has condemned the brutal murders, the destruction of rural democratic institutions like the panchayats and the gross violation of the right to life by the murderous gangs of the TMC in West Bengal who are out to finish whatever rights the poor have to protect themselves from the brutal attacks of goons defended by the state machinery.