With a public hearing for extension of UAIL planned in an atmosphere of intimidation, where dissent is impossible, human rights groups are writing to executive, judicial and legislative heads of the Indian governance for intervention.

Dear friends:
On 14th October, we'd  like to send the following letter on the Kashipur mining issue to the people mentioned below. We need organisational and individual sign-ons. Please send in your endorsements to madhu.dutta@gmail.com and circulate this email to others.
 
To:
Justice A S Anand, Chairman, National Human Rights Commission;
Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, Chief Justice, Hon'ble Supreme Court of India
Shri Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister, Government of India
Shri D Raja, General Secretary, Communist Party of India
Smt. Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson, United Progressive Alliance Government
Shri Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister, Orissa Government
Collector, Rayagada District, Orissa
Superintendent of Police, Tikri Police Station, Rayagada District, Orissa 

Subject: Concern about the law and order situation in Kashipur, Rayagada and violent tactics by the state administration to repress the peaceful struggle of the adivasi and dalit people against the proposed bauxite mining and alumina refinery by Utkal Alumina International Limited.
 
On October 17, 2006, a public hearing is being held to consider M/S UAIL's proposal to expand mining, refinery and power plant capacity at its captive mines and refinery complex in Kashipur, Block, Rayagada District, Orissa. The company plans to mine the sacred Baphlimali hill, and locate its refinery on 5th Schedule lands. Indeed, the project itself is unconstitutional as it aims to divert Fifth Schedule lands from adivasi to non-adivasi hands. The 1997 Samata Judgement by the Hon'ble Supreme Court upheld the principle of non-alienation of adivasi lands in 5th Schedule areas.
 
Ignoring the perversion of the Constitution for the time being, the public hearing itself is illegal. The Chairperson of the Orissa State Pollution Control Board concedes this, even while stating that it has to be held because of high-level pressure, curiously from the Union Ministry of Environment & Forests. The illegalilty arises because there is no question of expansion when UAIL does not have valid environmental clearance for the original capacity. Rather than prosecute the company for going ahead with construction at their site without valid consents, the Orissa Pollution Control Board is currently engaged in an effort to regularize the illegalities.
 
Even more worrisome is the looming spectre of violence that threatens to violently suppress any dissent against mining industries. Already, adivasis and dalit communities in Kashipur have paid a heavy price at the hands of a trigger- and lathi-happy State Government. Women have been humiliated, children beaten and illegally detained, those opposed to mining hunted down like common criminals and picked up from streets, and a reign of terror unleashed in and around Kashipur.
 
The public hearing is to be held in Tikri town, a hotbed of UAIL and state-sponsored goonda support for the mining corporation. Past District Collectors and Police officials have exhibited a blatantly racist outlook towards adivasis and dalits who oppose the project. The Chief Minister has said that any dissent against industrialization will not be countenanced, shortly after which the Kalinganagar massacre of January 2, 2006 , happened. The Hon'ble Finance Minister Mr. P. Chidambaram has said that dissent is permitted only to the extent that India's 8% growth rate is not derailed.
 
We're writing with fear for the lives and safety of our brothers and sisters from the mining and refinery area of UAIL at the hands of the police and the State Government. The public hearing is illegal, but the State seems intent on holding it. The atmosphere is tremendously vitiated, and the State will ensure that room for dissent is minimal if not non-existent.
 
The EIA Notification, 2006, under which the public hearing is being held makes a mockery of public participation. It provides people who stand to lose their lands, livelihoods – and in the case of Orissa, their lives – one opportunity to participate in the decision making. Even here, the law permits them to only raise issues and seek clarifications, not offer opinions or articulate their aspirations.
 
As concerned individuals, human rights, civil liberties, labour and environmental groups from around the country, we write to you to express our concern regarding at the reign of terror and the perversion of democracy by our leaders at the Centre and the State Government of Orissa. We're certain that by bringing these glaring irregularities to your attention, this sham public hearing is cancelled, and that the aspirations of the adivasis that belong to the land in question are respected.

Background
For more than 13 years, people of Kashipur have been peacefully resisting the Utkal Alumina International Limited's  project to mine the sacred Baphlimali hills, and refine the bauxite in Kashipur, Orissa. Promoted by Aditya Birla owned Hindalco Industries Ltd and Canadian mining company Alcan, the project has seen intense and unflinching opposition from the adivasi and dalit communities in the area.   The State has responded with intense police brutalities, resulting in the arrest and repeated harassment of local people over the years, and the death of at least three adivasis during a police firing in 2000 at Maikanch and a reign of terror since December 2004.
 
Fundamental Issues Surrounding the UAIL Project in Kashipur, Orissa:

1. Any mining leases given to Utkal Alumina International Limited in Kashipur block of Rayagada district are illegal, in fact unconstitutional. The area where the lease has been given is a Fifth Schedule area. The Supreme Court in Samatha vs State of A.P., 1997, categorically held that transfer of land by any means including lease by the Government to a non-tribal is impermissible under the Fifth Schedule.

2. The project has promised jobs to only one member of each family whose house site is acquired – approximately 147 persons.  However it is estimated that about 22,000 people will be affected across at least 82 villages and 6 Gram Panchayats if the loss of agricultural lands and degradation of common resources are included. No compensation package presented by the company has ever offered land for land and the company has refused to put down even its meager and limited compensation offers in writing.

3. Red mud, fly ash, and massive dust from the blasting of top soil will be let into the local streams, rivers and the slurry ponds built for this purpose – polluting these water sources and altering the ground water and soil capacities of the region drastically. And all this for a project life of approximately 25 years.

4. The Government is using the argument of development to damn opposition to the projects. But the mining that is to take place through these projects is not going to contribute much, if at all, to the development of this part of Orissa. The 100% export-oriented project's aim is to straight away give the raw alumina to foreign countries.

5. Police and administrative pressure is being used to obtain the consent of the people opposing the projects. The local government has been employing the state police to terrorize and coerce local people into giving up their opposition through false cases, harassment and arrests. The police and local administration are not even pretending to be maintaining law and order even handedly. In late 2004 the local administration set up a "public opinion process" to manufacture consent in the three villages where homestead lands were to be taken. Villages were cordoned off and palli sabhas held in Extension to Scheduled Areas Act (1996).