Activists Push Back as Vedanta Eyes Niyamgiri Bauxite Again
The NAPM has cautioned against renewed efforts to mine bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills after Vedanta's chairman called for reopening the reserve.
A pan-India coalition of environmental groups has raised the alarm over what it calls fresh attempts to open the Niyamgiri hills in Odisha to bauxite mining, days after Vedanta Group chairman Anil Agarwal said the reserve should be reopened and would generate jobs for local tribal communities.
The National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) said the proposal cannot override the decisions of the communities that live in the hills, which span the Kalahandi and Rayagada districts.
Prafulla Samantara, a Goldman Environmental Prize laureate, said the hills belong to the Dongria Kondh, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group that has long depended on and protected the region's natural resources. He asserted that neither the company's chairman nor the State or Central governments can claim ownership over Niyamgiri, and urged the State government not to hand the hills over to Vedanta again.
Samantara recalled that the proposed mining project was halted nearly 13 years ago after sustained opposition. Residents of all 112 villages in the affected area opposed it, he said, and the Supreme Court ruled that the question of whether mining could proceed had to be settled by the relevant gram sabhas. Following that direction, the gram sabhas of 12 Dongria Kondh villages unanimously rejected the project, and those decisions must be honoured, he added.
NAPM State convener Narendra Mohanty alleged that the recent arrest of Lada Sikaka, president of the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, and the continued imprisonment of the organisation's adviser Lingaraj Azad in multiple cases form part of a broader effort to weaken the movement against corporate control of the hills.
Human rights activist Biswapriya Kanungo said the gram sabha decisions carry constitutional and statutory weight. Adivasi rights in Scheduled Areas are protected under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act and the Forest Rights Act, he noted, adding that Vedanta had approached the Supreme Court and filed a review petition in 2016, which was rejected.
In its statement, the NAPM said Niyamgiri is more than a source of mineral wealth. The bauxite-bearing mountain ecosystem helps sustain rivers including the Bansadhara and the Nagavali, it said, and for the Dongria Kondh it is a sacred landscape revered as the abode of their deity.