The joint statement below, released on 21 October 2026, underlines the ongoing repression in Tijimali Hills in Odisha – which has now familiarly become a permanent feature of all mine-rich Adivasi areas. These areas are living under an ongoing siege simply because of the “wealth” that lies beneath and all laws there are violated with impunity every day.
Campaign to Defend Nature and People (CDNP), Citizens for Democracy (CFD), and Loktantrik Rashtranirman Abhiyan (LRA) strongly condemn the arrests of the activists Lingraj Azad, Lakshman Nayak, Hiramal Nayak, Lada Sikaka, Randall Sequiera and Naring Dei, struggling to save the Tijimali hills in Odisha from falling into the hands of corporations. We demand their immediate and unconditional release. Of these, Lingraj Azad has been in prison since 25 March 2026, and others were arrested this month. Lingraj was arrested and rearrested despite a court-granted bail.
Adivasi and Dalit communities in Odisha’s Rayagada and Kalahandi districts are fiercely opposing a large-scale bauxite mining project in their sacred Tijimali hills, the abode of their deity Tij Raja. This project is awarded to London-based Vedanta Limited, which has a notorious global track record of environmental and human rights violations. The Mohan Charan Majhi-led BJP Odisha government, hand in glove with the BJP Government at the Centre however, is determined to crush the legitimate demands of the Adivasis of Tijimali and hand over the rich natural resources to Vedanta. The entire area is under the Fifth Schedule, where the Constitution guarantees Adivasis rights over land and self-governance. Yet, in order to achieve its nefarious anti-people ends, the State Government has flagrantly violated PESA (Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996) and FRA (Forest Rights Act, 2006), fabricated Gram Sabha consent, and arrested and rearrested Adivasi and Dalit leaders.
Bauxite mining is well-known for long-lasting pollution of air, water and soil, with lasting impact on human health, and bauxite-rich areas are sources of springs and rivers. Despite this, Vedanta’s project was cleared by the Environmental Impact Assessment procedure of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. Public and private-sector banks and financial institutions are funding this destructive project violating their own Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) standards.
On April 7, nearly 70 people were injured after police personnel surrounded and attacked Kantamal, a village in the Tijimali range in Rayagada district. The police allegedly opened fire on people. Indigenous communities in the area were protesting against a road being laid through forest land in the Tijimali hills, for a bauxite mine operated by the Vedanta Group. The proposed 3-km road project required the felling of trees on nearly five hectares of forest land.
The villagers of the Adivasi belt in these regions have been protesting since 2023 under the banner of the “Maa, Mati Surakhya” organisation when the State Government allocated the bauxite mining project—spread across an area of 1,549 hectares, which includes 699 hectares of forest land in the Rayagada and Kalahandi districts—to Vedanta Limited on a 50-year mining lease.
While the agitation is ongoing, the ferocity of the government is growing by leaps and bounds. A “double-engine” Government of a political party that calls itself nationalist, is functioning as an enabler of corporate colonialism in the name of “development”. There is an all-round failure of democratic institutions. The police functions like a private force of corporates, unchecked by the judiciary. The Governor and the Tribes Advisory Council who are the Constitutionally mandated protectors of Fifth Schedule areas, the State Forest Department, and the ST and SC Development Department have failed in their duties. The billionaire owner of Vedanta has the audacity to sit in the Chief Minister’s office and demand re-opening of bauxite mining in Niyamgiri, which had been disallowed by the Supreme Court in 2013 in a landmark judgement, where local Gram Sabhas of Dongria Kondh Adivasis had unanimously rejected the project, preferring to preserve their land and their deity Niyam Raja. In view of the repressive measures adopted by the government, which is subservient to corporate interests, we remind it that repression is no answer to the legitimate demands of the people and will only deepen public resentment. The uncontrolled corporate-driven mining spree in Odisha will exhaust its mineral resources in three to four decades, destroy its land, water and forest resources and associated livelihoods, and create only precarious new livelihoods. Generations to come will pay dearly for the reckless acts of the corporate-friendly Government.
We congratulate and support the brave defenders of natural resources in Tijimali, as well as the many civil society movements in Odisha that are opposing the destructive corporate-led model of extractivist “development” that the Government is promoting.
Issued by
Rajesh Ramakrishnan (CDNP) Jyotsna Roy (CFD) Manthan (LRA)
