Odisha fells 17K trees for mining

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Forest Development Corporation (OFDC) has felled 17,704 trees for facilitating opencast mining at Talabira II and Talabira III coal blocks under Rengali forest range in Odisha’s Sambalpur and Jharsuguda districts.

This was informed by Suresh Suman, chief general manager (project head) Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC), a government of India’s Navratna company which owns the coal blocks.

Suman refuted the media reports that Adani Enterprise, which has entered into an agreement with NLC for development and operation of the twin mines, felled 40,000 trees.

“After getting due permission from forest officials, we have commissioned the tree felling work to OFDC, an Odisha government public sector unit. Adani Enterprise is nowhere in the picture as far as clearing of trees is concerned. Besides, `1.2 crore has been paid to the OFDC as advance to carrying out the tree felling work,” said Suman. He added that compensatory afforestation work will be undertaken as per the provisions of the Odisha government. Media reports said the trees were felled in the past few days amid tight security. Ten platoons of police forces were deployed in the villages to check any untoward incident. The Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change has given stage II clearance to divert 1,038.187 hectares of forest land for an opencast coal mining project.

Quoting sources in the office of chief conservator of forest, Sambalpur, a section of media said 1,30,721 trees need to be cut down for the mine.

In fact, NLC had signed a mine development and operator contract with the Adani Group in 2018.

While the government has given the permission for the area to be diverted, the forest has been protected and conserved by forest dwellers in the Talabira village, along with five other hamlets in the area.

The village residents had formed an organisation called ‘Talabira Gramya Jungle Committee,’ had appointed guards and were paying them 3 kgs of rice per family for protecting the forest.

The villagers have protected the forest and are dependent on it but, they have no titles under the Forest Rights Act, (FRA), 2006. “We have protected this forest for more than 50 years. Around 3,000 people are dependent on this forest which is spread over 970 hectares. Now, these trees are being cut down by the government for coal,” residents of Khinda hamlet were quoted as saying to local vernacular media.

“We thought that this is our forest and no one can take it from us. We never thought that our forest could be taken away. Therefore, we never applied for rights under FRA,” they informed.

Residents said they had gone to the district collector, who said, “The forest belonged to the government and the villagers had no right or say regarding what the government did with it.”

Under the Forest Rights Act, officials have a responsibility to create awareness among people but no such training has been given nor awareness created, claimed environment activists.