Tribals oppose alternate mine to Vedanta

Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti (NSS), an outfit of tribals agitating against the alumina refinery of Vedanta Aluminium (VAL) at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district, on Tuesday sought Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s intervention to overturn the Odisha government’s plan to allocate alternate sources of bauxite to the project, which is reeling under acute shortage of raw material following denial of permission to mine in Niyamgiri Hill by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest.

The Samiti aired its views through a 35 page memorandum addressed to Gandhi. A four member team of the tribals’ body later submitted the memorandum to Gandhi at Cuttack through their district congress president, Sadashiv Tripathy.

Raising slogans against VAL, Jairam Bariha, a Dongria Kondh of Ambaguda village in Kalahandi district said, “We oppose state government’s decision to allow mining in Niyamgiri or any other nearby hill as these hills are homes to scores of Dongria Kondh and Kutira Kondh tribes.

Bariha said, “We came to know that government is trying to arrange alternative sources of bauxite for Vedanta”.

He said, mining should not be allowed in the nearby Kandurumali, Sijumali, Sasubahumali, Karlapat reserves as these provide livelihood to the tribals inhabiting these hills.

“The effluent discharged by the company has led to deaths of our livestock and the government’s decision will destroy the numerous perennial streams. These reserves should not be given to any company including Vedanta”, said Bama Kadraka, another member of NSS. Gandhi had expressed his solidarity with the tribals, who were opposing Vedanta's plan to extract bauxite from the Niyamgiri hill for use in its alumina refinery during his visit to Kalahandi district in 2010.

It may be noted VAL, which has shut down its one million tone alumina refinery in Lanjigarh since December 5 for want of bauxite, had entered into a pact with the state-owned Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) for bauxite supply from Niyamgiri. However, this was red flagged by MoEF, which scrapped the stage-II forest clearance of the mining project on August 24, 2010.

Unable to find bauxite reserves VAL has urged the state government to expedite processing of OMC’s pending applications, especially for those bauxite leases that fall in non-forest areas.