Exclusive media reports claim that more than 15,000 trees
have been felled over 137 hectares of bio-diversity-rich forest
of Hasdeo Arand for the Parsa East and Kanta Basan (PEKB)
coal blocks of Chattisgarh.
Now as the mainstream media is not talking about this for obvious reasons, why is this an important issue? We’ll explain.
How much Coal?
Hasdeo Arand is a biodiversity-rich spread over 170,000 hectares and over 5 billion tonnes of coal estimated to be sitting under this dense forest area(this much coal can fulfill India’s power demand for 7 years).
Reports suggest that once active, the coal mining capacity in PEKB
will be producing 20 million tonnes of coal per annum and estimated
800,000 trees will be cut down during this process.
But who is extracting the coal ?
According to an investigation by Scroll.in in April last year, the Adani Group has been excavating coal from the PEKB mine since 2013 on behalf of Rajasthan’s state electricity generation company, to whom it was originally allocated.
Now the newly appointed CM had made an obvious statement that the decision for coal mining was made during the Congress govt. and this is an extension of that decision.
What are the authority doing about this?
For the past 3 years, Alok Shukla, convener of the Chattisgarh Bachao Andolan, and many tribal right activist, and as well as the Gram Sabha leaders have been actively protesting relentless tree felling.
On July 26, 2022, the Chattisgarh assembly passed an unanimous resolution that mining ativities will not be carried out in Hasdeo. But unfortunately, deforestation activites have now started.
Bottom line
Now if we look through the figures of recently concluded assembly elections (especially in the tribal dominant regions), it wouldnt be wrong to say that tribal welcomed BJP over congress in the state
this time where 30% of the total population is tribal.
But ironically these tribals are likely to lose their JAL(water), JUNGLE (forest), and ZAMEEN (land) like never before under this government.
