Development at the cost indigenous rights

Illegal Vedanta bauxite mining in Odisha is a grave violation of Indigenous rights, as it forcibly usurps tribal land—particularly in the Sijimali Hills and Niyamgiri range—without the free, prior, and informed consent of Adivasi communities mandated by the PESA Act and Forest Rights Act. The Dongria Kondh tribe, who revere Niyamgiri as sacred home to their god Niyamraja, face displacement and cultural destruction as open-pit mining threatens to annihilate their ancestral homeland, sacred rivers, and centuries-old way of life. Instead of protecting tribal sovereignty over Schedule V land, the Odisha government has facilitated corporate land grabbing while arresting and intimidating Indigenous activists who oppose the mining, criminalizing their resistance and violating their constitutional rights.