Four-fold compensation for villagers displaced by Gare Palma coal mine

Decision entails an additional burden of Rs 75 cr; earlier compensation was twice the market price of land surrendered

Locals who were ousted to accommodate Chhattisgarh’s Gare Palma-3 coal block will get a compensation equivalent to four times the market price of the land they had to give up.

The coal block in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district was previously owned by Goa Industrial Development Corporation but was apparently never developed. The block was re-auctioned in March 2015 and allotted to the state-owned Chhattisgarh State Power Generation Company (CSPGCL).

The company appointed Adani Enterprises as mine developer and operator. The villagers displaced by the project had been demanding higher compensation, which the state government had now agreed to pay.

Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel instructed the CSPGCL Chairman Shailendra Shukla to pay four times the market price of the land that the affected villagers had to surrender. Earlier, the state had announced a compensation amounting to twice the market price.

In all, 337 villagers owning 401.342 hectares had been affected. They were inhabitants of five villages in Tamnaar block, which has rich coal deposits.

Shukla said people of three villages had been paid twice the market price earlier. After getting Chief Minister’s consent, CSPGCL has now decided to raise the compensation to four times, due to which it will incur an additional burden of Rs 75 crore.

The Chhattisgarh government had, in May 2019, issued a notification about the compensation equivalent to four times the market price of the land acquired for any government project.