Amnesty International, India in a report published on Thursday, said that the operations by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and its private partners in the Pakri-Barwadih coal mine in Hazaribagh are being undertaken without adequately consulting affected communities.
The report, available on the Amnesty International website, came in the wake of October 1 police firing, which claimed four people, including three children following protests over land acquisition for the mine.
“NTPC’s mine received clearance to use forest land without adequate consultation with communities who depend on these forests for their livelihoods. Jharkhand authorities failed to seek the consent of village assemblies for the use of forest land as required under Indian law,” the international human rights group quoted its senior researcher Aruna Chandrashekhar as saying. “It is essential that authorities consult communities before the mining proceeds and people lose access to forest lands,” it added.
According to the Rights group, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), had granted clearance to mine 1026 hectares of forest land to the NTPC in the year 2010. However, the clearance appears to have been given without due regard to whether gram sabhas had been consulted, it said. “The MoEF’s letter granting forest clearance does not specify whether gram sabha’s consent was obtained. Over 50 villagers, who Amnesty International India spoke to from six of 23 affected villages, said that they did not know of any gram sabhas that had been conducted on the diversion of forest land for the mine,” the report reads.
Further, the report suggests that the NTPC’s application for forest clearance includes letters recording the consent of ‘forest rights committees’, which are supposed to assist gram sabhas in verifying forest rights claims, are not representative bodies, and documents from them cannot serve as a substitute for gram sabha resolutions approving the diversion of forest land.
Also, these committees comprised only a few people from each village, well short of the quorum required for gram sabha resolutions. Each of the consent letters was signed by only about 5-12 people from each village, and only 85 persons signed the 17 letters. This is a small fraction of the over 38,000 people from Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim communities who live in the affected villages.
Ironically, some people whose signatures feature in the letters said that they had not signed the documents, said the report.
In its response to Amnesty International India’s letters, NTPC have failed to give details of how the consent of gram sabhas has been taken by the company, says the report.
land for the coal mine was acquired in 2009 under India’s Coal Bearing Areas (Acquisition and Development) Act, 1957, which is used for land acquisition for coal mining by the Indian public-sector companies. No evictions have been carried out yet following the land acquisition.
The Coal Bearing Areas Act contains no provisions which require authorities to consult affected communities, or seek the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples. land acquisition under the Act is explicitly exempted from the requirements of social impact assessment, consultation and consent imposed by a new land acquisition law in 2013.
On October 1, four people, including three teenagers, were killed and more than 40 persons injured when police personnel shot live ammunition following protests over the mine in the village of Darikalan. Some of the protestors had thrown stones at the policemen.