When officials engage in fraud for mining barons |
There is evidence to prove that successive governments headed by the BJD and now the BJP, have fraudulently manufactured consent of tribals for acquiring their land for mining. Bureaucrats, secure in the knowledge that the Government has their back and will never allow them to be prosecuted, have deposed that Gram Sabha (Village Council) meetings were held and consent of the villagers obtained. Tribals contest the claim but bureaucrats deposed in the High Court that they were personally present at the meetings. Not surprisingly, the courts accepted the word of the Babus.
Two developments on 16 October this year have drawn worldwide attention to the fraudulent and repressive character of the ruling elite in Odisha. The fraudulent nature of the establishment came to light in an explosive investigative report published that day by Al Jazzera, the well-known news portal, about large-scale forgery allegedly undertaken by the Mohan Majhi government of the state to hand over almost 3000 acres of forest land to the Adani/Vedanta Groups for bauxite mining.
The repressive character of the Majhi administration was borne out by the fact that on the late night of 16 October, the district police knocked on the door of a young doctor named Dr Randall Sequeira at Bhawanipatna in Kalahandi and arrested him along with Laxman Naik, a tribal rights activist, without any warrant: the charge was that these two people had highlighted the brutal crackdown by the district police on the tribal people of the Kantamal village in Rayagada district in an early morning swoop on 7 April this year.
On that fateful morning, a large posse of policemen had entered the area at 3 am, cut off the electricity, broken open doors and attempted to take into........