“The government enacts laws and frames policies that it claims will benefit the people, and then goes on to tear them to shreds in order to favour multinationals. The rhetoric of the Environment Minister soars ever higher even as his actions stoop ever lower. Is it any surprise that more and more people and many adivasis and forest dwellers of this country in particular, have reached the conclusion that the government today is nothing but one working for the corporates?,” CPI MP D. Raja said in a letter to Prime Minister.
Expressing shock that the government had “flagrantly” violated the law to favour the project, he said the people in the project area had rights over the land, which cannot be handed over.
Two enquiry committees reached the conclusion that the Forests Right Act had been violated and the Orissa government had made false statements on record about whether there were eligible people in the area.
The committee specifically said there were other traditional forest dwellers and forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes in the project area. On October 25, last year the Ministry’s own statutory Forest Advisory Committee noted that the requirements of the Ministry’s order of August 3, 2009 had not been met by the Orissa government.