RAJARAMAN SUNDARESAN: How Odisha Government Kept The Public Out Of A Public Hearing For A Bauxite Mine

By Dilip -

How is this a public hearing? Who are they hearing? The police or the barbed wires they have put to keep us out?   See video

“In Mali Parbat we grow ice, mandia, kaangu (millets), harvest roots, tubers. Because of its mountain streams, our paddy ripens, our millets ripen.  We are able to collect firewood and produce to take to the market and sell. How can the government give away our jungle like this to the company?”

Laxmi Khillo, 22,  was angry as she explained how she should have been at a 22 November public hearing called by the state government. That hearing was a legal requirement, supposed to give a voice to locals as part of a process by which the ministry of environment, forests & climate change would decide if it should grant a new environmental clearance to a now-defunct bauxite mine. 

The company Laxmi referred to was Hindalco Industries Ltd, a part of the Aditya Birla Group and India’s largest aluminium company. The project in question was the Mali Parbat mine, which had already violated environmental laws and sparked widespread unrest, despite running at only  2.2% of its capacity in the years it did mine bauxite here in this southeastern Odisha district. ..

https://article-14.com/post/how-odisha-government-kept-the-public-out-of-a-public-hearing-for-a-bauxite-mine-619f0831a5c44


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