According to a government body in India, documents were falsified so that a coal mine being developed by an Adani company could proceed. The Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission released a report on 6 November 2024 stating that the environmental approval given to the Parsa coal project relied on falsified documents purporting to be records of consent by village councils. When trees were felled in preparation for the coal mine in October 2024, violent skirmishes between police and local tribal people broke out. Police and protesters were injured – all because of a coal project whose approval was based on falsehoods.
Key facts and figures:
Name of coal block: Parsa
Location: Parsa is situated in the north-central part of the Hasdeo-Aranya forests in the Udaypur and Premnagar tehsils (or sub-districts) in the Surguja and Surajpur districts of Chhattisgarh in central India. The Parsa coal block is adjacent to the PEKB and Tara blocks. Latitude 22’48’57.01°N and 22°51’56.85°N; Longitude 82’45’10.50 E and 82°47’22.86°E
Name of owner: Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (RRVUNL)
Mine Developer and Operator: Adani Mining
Estimated coal reserves: 184.26 million tonnes
Peak output: 5 million tonnes per annum
Population affected: 1464 people
Cost: Indian Rupees 1450 crores in 2016 (US $172 million)
Current status: Preparatory works such as tree-felling have commenced but mining is yet to start
An investigation by a government body in Chhattisgarh, the Scheduled Tribes Commission, has found that false records were created to enable the environmental approval of a new coal mine being developed by the Adani Group. The records pertain to meetings of village councils, known as gram sabhas, whose consent is a necessary step in obtaining approval for a mine on tribal lands. This is the most important finding in a report of the Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission, a Constitutional authority, that was released on 6 November 2024.
Here is a chronology of the sequence of events that led to this explosive finding:
28 June 2016: Dilbandhu, whose signature later appears in various gram sabha documents, passes away. His allegedly forged signature was later used to falsify records.
22 April 2017: The official record of a gram sabha in Ghatbarra village says a resolution was passed stating there was no objection to forest and revenue lands being used for developing the Parsa coal block, including cutting trees for that purpose. However, this resolution was later described as a falsification and challenged in the Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission (‘the Commission’) by opponents of the mine. Also, the number of attendees recorded as attending the meeting was allegedly increased from 132 to 482 through forgery of the documents submitted to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) of the government of India.
26 August 2017: A meeting of the gram sabha is organised in Fatehpur village with 170 attendees; discrepancies are later found in the attendance register and the person presiding over the meeting is accused of improper conduct.
24 January 2018: A meeting of the gram sabha is held in Hariharpur village. The number of attendees recorded as attending the meeting was allegedly fraudulently increased from 95 to 195 in official documents submitted by the applicant company. (It is not known whether the ‘applicant company’ refers to RRVUNL or to the Adani company contracted to develop the mine)
27 January 2018: A meeting of the gram sabha is organised in Salhi village. A resolution stating that those present had no objection to developing the coal block was allegedly added to the minutes of the meeting in a fraudulent manner after the meeting concluded. The number of persons attending the meeting allegedly increases from 150 to 450 in the official records submitted by the applicant company. (Again, it is not known whether the ‘applicant company’ refers to RRVUNL or to the Adani company contracted to develop the mine)
3 August 2021: Residents of the Salhi, Hariharpur, Fatehpur and Ghatbarra villages file a complaint with the Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission alleging that environmental approval for the Parsa coal block was obtained in a fraudulent manner based on forged documents.
6 April 2022: Despite these complaints, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (‘the ministry’) and the state government of Chhattisgarh both grant their approval to start felling trees to develop the Parsa coal block.
November 2023: Elections take place in 20 out of the 90 assembly constituencies in Chhattisgarh on 7 November, in the remaining 70 constituencies occurring on 17 November.
3 December 2013: Results of the assembly elections are announced. The BJP wins 54 out of the 90 seats – the biggest ever by the party in Chhattisgarh. The Congress led by Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel loses power, winning only 35 seats. The remaining seat is won by a candidate of the Gondvana Ganatantra Party.
4-12 December 2023: Hundreds of trees are cut for the proposed Parsa coal mine after the election results are declared, while local community leaders and environmental campaigners are detained and incarcerated by police. All this occurs even before the swearing in of the new Chief Minister.
13 December 2023: The BJP’s Vishu Deo Sai sworn in as the new Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh.
30 May 2024: The Commission instructs the Divisional Commissioner of Surguja (the top government official in the area where the villages are located) to suspend work on mining-related processes at Parsa.
22 July 2024: The residents from the above four villages file a complaint about gram sabha proposals for clearing forests for the Parsa mine, to the Divisional Commissioner.
10 September 2024: A public hearing is conducted by the Scheduled Tribes Commission in Surguja during which several irregularities and anomalies are identified in the documents pertaining to proceedings of the meetings of the gram sabhas. The mine owner, Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (RRUVNL), requests that it be allowed ten days to submit its response to the Commission. The Commission later claims that officials of the RRUVNL did not adhere to the deadline, and did not appear before the Commission.
October 2024: Tree felling takes place at the Parsa coal block despite the Commission’s order of 30 May 2024 to the Divisional Commissioner of Surguja to suspend work on mining-related processes at Parsa.
6 November 2024: The Commission recommends cancellation of the order of approval for setting up the Parsa coal block issued on 6 April 2022 and the convening of new meetings of the gram sabhas at Salhi, Hariharpur and Fatehpur.
Source: Report of the Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission of 6 November 2024 and public information
Background
The Parsa block was allocated to the state government’s Chhattisgarh State Power Generation Company Limited (CSPGCL). It appointed Adani Enterprises as its partner for the development, mining and transportation of coal. Later, the block was transferred to the Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (RRVUNL), owned by the state government of Rajasthan in western India, that already had an agreement to mine coal from the PEKB blocks to fuel its power plants. Adani remained the Mining Development Operator (MDO) for both the PEKB and Parsa blocks. This coal was earmarked for power plants in Rajasthan as well as for Adani’s own power projects. Parsa is slated to produce five million tonnes of coal every year. This would be the first new coal mine to open in over a decade in the forest region and is adjacent to the Parsa East Kente Basan (PEKB) coal mine that the Adani Group has been operating since 2013.
The consent of the gram sabhas (village councils) is a legal requirement before mining can begin.
Scheduled Tribes are groups of people in India that are recognised in the country’s Constitution as being among the most disadvantaged socio-economic sections. The Indian Constitution has made special provisions for these tribals to help them exercise their rights and to facilitate their socio-economic development.
Nearly a third of the population of the densely-forested, mineral-rich province of Chhattisgarh comprise tribals. AdaniWatch has extensively reported on how the mainly tribal residents of the 1800-square-kilometre Hasdeo forests have been resisting the establishment of several large coal mines to be developed and operated by Adani.
The organisation spearheading local opposition to the col mine is the Hasdeo Aranya Bachao Sangharsh Samiti (Committee for the Struggle to Save Hasdeo Aranya, or HABSS). For more than a decade now, HABSS has been opposing the opening of coal mines in this biodiverse area. The organisation enjoyed some success in 2021 when the state government of Chhattisgarh declared much of Hasdeo forest as a ‘protected elephant reserve’. This led to the de-notification of several potential new mines, other than those that had been approved (the operational PEKB coal mine, its proposed extension and Parsa).
In 2021, HABSS and 41 residents from the villages concerned filed a complaint with the Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission, alleging that documents claiming that the new mine had been approved by gram sabhas (or village councils) of the area had been forged. The Commission began its probe in May 2024 and has now acknowledged the veracity of the allegations.
In its report, the Commission stated that it appeared the approvals under the Forest Rights Act and the rules specified by the government of India’s Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change that were obtained for the Parsa coal mine were based on ‘forged’ and ‘falsified’ documents.
The report added that while it seemed that the approval of three village councils of the villages of Hariharpur, Salhi, and Fatehpur villages had been given, the representatives of these three gram sabhas told the Commission categorically that they ‘never consented’ to the Parsa mine being set up and for trees to be cut.
On 12 November 2024, HABSS issued a press release signed by its coordinator Umeshwar Singh Armo alleging that a person named Dilbandhu (he uses one name) presented by Adani Group officials before journalists was not the same person who had signed the reportedly-fabricated gram sabha documents granting consent for the establishment of the Parsa mine.
The secretary of the Ghatbarra gram sabha, Gopalram Yadav, deposed before the Commission that Dilbandhu passed away on 28 June 2016, and furnished a death certificate in this regard. He wondered how Dilbandhu’s signatures could appear in the documents relating to a meeting of the village council in the following year. He claimed that the attendance registers for that meeting and the documents sent to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests had discrepancies.
HABSS alleged that that there was a ‘corrupt’ alliance between the Adani Group and the BJP government in Chhattisgarh to illegally displace indigenous people from their forests and their lands, disregarding the Constitutional authority of the village councils.
Recent conflict
For the proposed new Parsa coal mine to become fully operational, two villages would have to be razed to the ground while a third would be partly razed. In these villages are the homes of many leaders of HABSS.
Between 16 October and 18 October this year, tens of thousands of trees were cut down to start mining operations at Parsa. Approximately 400 police personnel and other officials of the state’s Revenue Department were ordered to stymie local protests. When the residents of the area, largely adivasis – literally meaning original inhabitants – protested against the cutting of trees, clashes between the police and the protesters left the co-convenor of HABSS, Ramlal Kariyam, with a bloody gash on the head. Besides him, nine others were arrested. After trees were cut, a site adjacent to the PEKB mine, where supporters of the HABSS were fasting in groups as a form of non-violent protest, was removed. The protest had been going on for nearly three years.
Kariyam, whom AdaniWatch interviewed earlier this year, was named in two complaints filed by the local police for protesting against the development of the Parsa mine. The complaints, copies of which have been seen by the authors, allege that the accused were responsible for assaults and attempted murder and had sought to instigate rioting. Besides Kariyam, among the accused are Muneshwar Porte and Sunita Porte, who have also been interviewed by AdaniWatch.
A tried and tested playbook
What is now playing out is a tried and tested playbook that will seem familiar to anyone who has followed the way the Adani Group’s mining projects are set up. Those leading protests are arrested; criminal cases against them are contrived; work on the project begins as legal challenges remain pending; after the project has progressed to a point where it is deemed irreversible, the ‘project-affected persons’ are sought to be assuaged with token compensation.
The difference in this instance is that an official body has concluded that the environmental approval to start the Parsa coal mine was given on the basis of falsified documents claiming that the village councils had approved the project.
The politics associated with the Hasdeo forests
In December 2023, the Congress lost government in Chhattisgarh to the BJP, the right-wing, Hindu-nationalist party in power in New Delhi. Even before the BJP’s Vishnu Deo Sai was sworn in as the new Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, the cutting of trees in preparation for mining at Parsa had begun (in December 2023, see AdaniWatch story).
The new Chhattisgarh government led by Chief Minister Sai overturned its predecessor government’s decision not to cut trees for the Parsa mine and announced that trees would be cut for developing the mine near Ghatbarra Village on 18 October this year.
Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition in the lower house of Parliament, said he and his party, the Indian National Congress (henceforth Congress), condemned the violence terming it a ‘violation of fundamental rights of tribals’. His sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is an office bearer of the Congress, also came out in support of the protesters: ‘The tribals, who have been the owners of the forests for centuries, are being evicted so that Adani-ji’s mines can operate.’ (Ji is a word used in several Indian languages after a person’s name to denote respect.)
Police repression alleged
Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan (CBA), an organisation dedicated to advocating for tribal rights in the region, issued a statement condemning the Sai administration’s ‘repressive’ actions against unarmed villagers.
Alok Shukla of the CBA, who is also the recipient of the prestigious Goldman Prize, had an inkling of what the report of the Commission would contain. A few days before the report was released on 6 November, he put out a post in Hindi on the micro-blogging site X (earlier Twitter), translated excerpts of which follow (see screenshot):
‘The entire system in Chhattisgarh has been sold to Adani. In the Parsa coal block, which had no consent from the gram sabhas, trees were felled with heavy police repression.
‘The Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission has investigated and written an order that the forest clearance given for the Parsa coal block was given on the basis of fabricated documents. The commission has recommended the cancellation of the final order of the state government’s forest clearance…
‘The Chief Minister of the state, Vishnu Deo Sai, is engaged in the service of a capitalist by suppressing the tribals. If he cannot protect the interests of his own society, then what will he do for the state?
‘The tribal society, which has put almost all the seats of North and South Chhattisgarh in the BJP's bag, should also introspect deeply.
‘… the tribals will be able to go to court and seek an emergency stay order on the clearances given to the mine, which would halt mining… But now that trees have been cut down, mining will begin any day, causing irreversible damage to the forest.’
On 6 November, the Hindu publication quoted Chhattisgarh Deputy Chief Minister Arun Sao saying that government officials would ‘look into’ the findings of the Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission. A senior RRVUNL official alleged to the publication that the reply to the notice issued by the company had not been considered by the Commission.
The authors are independent journalists in India.
