Last week, scores of people protesting against coal mines in an ecologically sensitive forest in Chhattisgarh were attacked by police and injured. Protesters have opposed the felling of thousands of trees in the Hasdeo Aranya forest. Tree felling began after both the central and state governments approved a new coal mine despite long-standing protests by tribal rights groups and environmental activists.
The new coal mine is an extension of the Parsa East Kente Basan (PEKB) mining project. Like its predecessor, it is controlled by Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam, a company operated by India’s corporate giant Adani.
Protesters claim the project could result in the loss of between 250,000 and 800,000 trees and cause massive displacement of local tribal communities, as well as devastating long-term environmental harm.
Permission for the second phase of mining was granted by the pro-corporate, ultra-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government in 2022. However, after protests, the Congress-led state government opposed the decision, filing an affidavit in the top court stating that land used by the previous PEKB phase holds enough coal (around 350 million tonnes) to supply the attached 4,300 MW power plant for the next 20 years.
Despite this, the BJP government, newly elected in the state and still in power centrally, granted further permission to the Adani-controlled company, claiming the first mine was exhausted.
Activists allege that environmental regulations and constitutional provisions requiring local consent were tampered with to push the project forward. Under India’s Constitution and PESA (Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act), explicit consent from local self-governing bodies is required for mining projects in Scheduled Areas. Local communities claim that the BJP government obtained consent through coercion and deceit, disregarding the spirit of these legal provisions.
Threat to ecology and local economy
Mining in the Hasdeo forest has been opposed by the local population for years. In 2021, protesters from affected districts walked hundreds of kilometers to the state capital, demanding an end to all mining leases in the Hasdeo area. That protest pushed the Congress government to withdraw new mining projects and file an affidavit in the country’s top court.
Alok Shukla, leader of the Save Hasdeo Forest Resistance Committee, which is spearheading protests to save the forest, recently told Frontline that the clashes around Hasdeo represent a battle “between corporate profit on one side and the rights of people to their livelihoods on the other.” Shukla claimed that corporations are backed by the authorities, which target and attack protesters to eliminate opposition to their profit-driven motives.
Due to its environmental significance, Hasdeo was one of the areas declared “no-go” for commercial purposes before the BJP came to power in 2014. Spanning around 170,000 hectares, it is one of the largest contiguous stretches of dense forest in central India, according to research conducted by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in 2021. It is also one of the last remaining old-growth forests in the country.
The forest is the catchment area for the Hasdeo River, the largest tributary of the Mahanadi River, and serves as a watershed for the Hasdeo reservoir, which is critical for irrigating around 300,000 hectares of double-cropped land across at least three districts in Chhattisgarh.
Hasdeo Aranya forest is home to various protected tribal groups such as Abujhmaria, Bihor, Halwa, and others, and it is a biodiversity hotspot. Some parts of it, like the Lemru Elephant Reserve declared by the state assembly in July 2022, are protected animal reserves. The fate of these areas is at risk if the mining contracts are not revoked.
The WII has opposed the mining projects in the region in a report submitted to the ICFRE, claiming that they would have adverse environmental impacts, including affecting the Hasdeo River, increasing human-animal conflicts, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, and causing a loss of precious biodiversity.
Chhattisgarh Kisan Sabha, a part of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), India’s largest organization of farmers, has also been involved in opposing mining in the Hasdeo forest. Following the violent attacks on tribals protesting against the fresh round of tree felling last week, it issued a statement condemning the police action and deforestation as an assault on the tribals’ livelihoods and the environment. The organization said that both the state and central governments are acting as agents of big capital, showing complete disregard for the people, the state, and the environment.
