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Investigation into the Impact on People due to Alumina Projects in South Orissa

23 April 2005, Bhubaneshwar: A five-member team from the People's Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi (PUDR), which had just returned from a visit to nine villages and a rehabilitation site in Rayagada and Kalahandi districts to examine the impact of three mining projects on people in the region, released its preliminary findings to the press here today.

The team drew attention to the unwarranted deployment of the police and Indian Reserve Battalion forces and the atmosphere of terror across villages in the area. Police personnel routinely raid village haats in search of people from protesting villages. Ordinary people and activists have been picked up and arbitrarily implicated in one criminal case after another.

Four people are still in custody in Rayagada Jail many weeks after their arrest.

It also drew attention to the fraudulent ways in which people's 'consent' to the three projects - UAIL, Aditya Alumina and Vedanta Alumina - is being generated. For one, no clear information is provided to them about the projects and their impact. Enquiring villagers are not told of the purpose of initial surveys; palli sabha (village hamlet) and gram sabha meetings are held in the presence of 2-3 platoons of police. Villagers are not asked what they want, instead vague and sometimes exaggerated promises of jobs and salaries are made. In one case, villagers were made to sign blank sheets of paper.

The rehabilitation policy in these projects, a spokesperson of the team argued, is inherently flawed. The Chief Secretary, Govt. of Orissa, and other senior government officials confirmed, in a meeting with the team this morning, that merely compensation but no job is being offered to those who lose their lands, despite the fact that they lose their basic means of livelihood. And those who lose their homes may get jobs, subject to availability and skills. Nothing is being offered to those landless labourers who cultivate dangar lands, dependent on the forest produce, nor those who will be affected by the drying up of streams in the region. In short, the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people will be adversely affected by these three projects, with little assured alternative of a life of dignity.

The PUDR team finally placed the following demands:

That the police and forces of the Indian Reserve Battalion be withdrawn from Kashipur immediately. False cases foisted against those opposing these projects be withdrawn, and the hunt for activists of movements in the area by the police be stopped forthwith. An enquiry be conducted into the death of Sukru Majhi in Lanjigarha. Action be taken against those responsible for the three deaths in the Maikanch firing of 16 December 2000. The 'consent' taken from the people through coercive gram sabha and palli sabha meetings be scratched. Detailed survey reports, environmental impact studies, technical feasibility studies be made available in an accessible form to people and their organizations. And finally, given the seeming impossibility of just rehabilitation and compensation, that the three projects be comprehensively reviewed, and, if necessary, scrapped.