Why tribals of Chhattisgarh's Hasdeo Arand are up in arms against Adani, BJP

In the days immediately preceding the declaration of results of the Chhattisgarh assembly elections last month, Raipur-based journalist Alok Putul was, arguably, the only one steadfast in his prediction of a Congress rout. While the state’s then Congress regime was being projected for a second consecutive win by pollsters and politicians of all hues alike on the back of chief minister Bhupesh Baghel’s seemingly populist schemes, Putul believed an undercurrent of anger against the government in tribal-dominated Surguja and Bastar divisions of north and south Chhattisgarh, respectively, would pave the way for a BJP triumph.

On December 3, as voting trends turned into results, Putul was proved right. The Congress was wiped out of Surguja, losing all 14 seats of the division on which it had registered an unprecedented win five years earlier, including Surguja royal and deputy chief minister TS Singh Deo’s constituency of Ambikapur. In the Bastar division, where the Congress held all 12 assembly segments, the BJP emerged victorious in eight constituencies.

The poll outcome that shocked the Congress as much as it did a victorious BJP, Putul believed, was the result of Chhattisgarh’s tribals using the power of their ballot to oust a CM and his government that was perceived as “anti-tribal”. Days later, when the BJP leadership in Delhi pulled another surprise by endorsing Vishnu Deo Sai, a tribal, for the CM’s post instead of other worthies whose names had been doing the rounds — among them former three-term CM Raman Singh and the BJP’s state president Arun Sao — Putul felt the decision was an obvious corollary to the saffron victory.

With months to go before the Lok Sabha polls, consolidating its hold on the state’s over 30 per cent tribal population was an obvious strategy for the BJP. Besides, a saffron sweep across the tribal belts of Chhattisgarh followed by the anointment of a tribal chief minister also provided the BJP a perfect precursor to Narendra Modi’s pan-India electoral outreach to the adivasi community, as part of which the Prime Minister released the first instalment of Rs 540 crore for one lakh beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan (PM-JANMAN) scheme earlier this month.

These strategic moves by the BJP may suggest that it has stolen a march over the Congress in tribal dominated regions of the country ahead of the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. Yet, the palpable buoyancy that the saffron party enjoyed at least in Chhattisgarh till just a month ago appears to be ebbing swiftly.

Over the past month, tribals and indigenous dwellers of the Hasdeo Arand forest, which spreads over 1.70 lakh hectares of north Chhattisgarh’s Korba, Surguja and Surajpur districts, have been mobilising in protest against the newly installed BJP government’s decision of resuming deforestation at an accelerated pace in this region. Solidarity marches by tribal groups from Bastar division in south Chhattisgarh have begun, while support from environmentalists, forest rights’ activists, civil society groups and even farmers of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) has also poured in.

“The same tribals who voted en bloc to oust the Congress from Chhattisgarh are now agitating against the BJP and their protest is getting shriller with every passing day... In the assembly polls, the tribals showed their electoral strength; they know that the BJP owes its government in the state to them and they want what is rightfully theirs,” said Putul.

For adivasis and indigenous dwellers of Hasdeo Arand, the struggle to protect their forest against government-ordered deforestation for extraction of coal and other minerals has been long and arduous. If they were fighting the Congress’ Baghel-led government’s decision to allow tree-felling and coal mining in the past, they are now leading the same struggle against the Sai-led BJP regime. What has also remained a constant is a third ‘enemy’ — controversial industrialist Gautam Adani, whose Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL) is contracted to mine the Parsa East and Kanta Basan (PEKB) coal block allotted by the Centre to the Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited.

What has been a fresh trigger for protests by the Hasdeo tribals, though, is the feeling of “being cheated” by Modi’s BJP and that too so soon after handing it an unexpected poll victory. Ironic as it may seem given Modi’s known proximity to Adani, the Prime Minister and his party colleagues from Chhattisgarh had, through the course of last year’s assembly polls and during the five years of Baghel’s government, relentlessly slammed the Congress over deforestation in Hasdeo and the dilution of laws and constitutional immunity that safeguard adivasis of the region against exploitation of their forests without their consent.

“Adani may have been the main villain for the Congress in the rest of the country but in Chhattisgarh, the party’s government under Baghel went all out to justify felling of trees across 43 hectares of Hasdeo forest to help AEL despite protests by tribals. It may now seem naive on our part to have believed Modi when he came here and assured us that our jungle (forest) and zameen (land) will be protected if we vote for the BJP but we thought, if nothing else, electoral considerations will make Modi stop deforestation even if it costs Adani his coal mines,” Alok Shukla, convener of Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan, one of the several rights’ outfits that are now leading the Save Hasdeo Arand campaign, told The Federal.

Shukla conceded that tribals and forest dwellers of Hasdeo “were wrong to have believed the Prime Minister” but warned, “we won’t give up the fight”. “We are even more determined now and we are more organised than before... our campaign is drawing huge support not just within Chhattisgarh but from across the country and we have charted a whole calendar of protests... no political party, including the BJP, can take our support for granted... in Hariharpur (Surguja district), the andolan has been going on for over 700 days now and no amount of force by the government has been able to break it,” Shukla said.

Umeshwar Singh Armo of the Hasdeo Aranya Bachao Sangharsh Samiti (HABSS) alleged that resumption of deforestation across 93 hectares of Hasdeo as part of phase II of the PEKB coal mining project has exposed that the “BJP government is prepared to go to any extent to crush our protest to help Adani”. Armo claimed that ever since tree-felling, which had stopped on July 26, 2022 after the Chhattisgarh Assembly passed a unanimous resolution stating “all coal blocks allotted in Hasdeo area should be cancelled”, resumed on December 21, “tribals, forest dwellers and members of the Hasdeo andolan were being intimidated and harassed by the local administration”.

“In the last few months of Baghel’s tenure, perhaps because of the impending election, the government brought a resolution to the Assembly to cancel all coal mines in Hasdeo, which was unanimously passed. However, within two weeks of coming to power, the BJP gave orders to resume deforestation activity... since adivasis and forest dwellers of Hasdeo are protected under the Constitution’s Fifth Schedule, consent of their gram sabha is mandatory to allow any exploitation of the forest, so the government is pressuring gram sabhas to give that consent,” Armo said. The HABSS leader also alleged that “local police dressed in plain clothes routinely picks up members of our andolan, detains them without any warrant and harasses them... Last month, Alok Shukla was picked up by the police and threatened; there have also been instances of forged consent letters being made by the administration”.

Tribals and indigenous dwellers of the Hasdeo Arand forest on a protest march.

Sudiep Shrivastava, a lawyer who has been providing legal aid to members of the Hasdeo campaign and had also moved the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and the Supreme Court against mining permissions granted in Hasdeo alleged that the BJP, like the previous Congress government, had “thrown all rules, laws and even the Constitution in the dustbin”.

“We have been presenting memorandum after memorandum to everyone in the government, from the President of India and the Governor of Chhattisgarh to the Chief Minister and the district administration highlighting the gross violation of Schedule V, Forest Conservation Act, PESA and several other laws but there has been no course correction. Over 30,000 trees have been cut in the last month alone and if the government is allowed to go ahead with its plan of deforestation in 93 hectares of forest under PEKB II, over five to six lakh trees will be cut,” Shrivastava said.

The lawyer added, “We lost nearly two lakh trees when the Baghel government allowed felling in 43 hectares of Hasdeo in 2021... this deforestation has already increased human-elephant conflict in villages that fall in and around Hasdeo and the ecological cost of all this is incalculable... exhaustive reports by Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education and the WII, which are also in the Supreme Court’s record of our cases, were clear in recommending that Hasdeo should be categorised a no-go mining zone because such activity would cause irreversible ecological crisis.”

With the budget session of Chhattisgarh assembly scheduled to begin from February 5, Hasdeo protesters are now planning to march over 300 kilometres from different parts of the Surguja division to Raipur for a “Vidhan Sabha Gherao”, said Shukla. Plans are also being made to launch a Chhattisgarh to Delhi protest march by members of the Save Hasdeo campaign “if the state government refuses to listen to our demands”, Shukla said.

What has further exacerbated the agony of Hasdeo dwellers is that not only is their forest being destroyed by a party that had romped to power promising “all measures” to protect it but that this is being done when the state has a tribal chief minister. “We had all welcomed the appointment of Vishnu Deo Sai as CM because we thought that as one of our own, as a tribal, he would be sympathetic to our cause... hamara mukhyamantri adivasi hai, hamari Rashtrapati adivasi hai, Pradhan Mantri adivasiyon ke liye JANMAN kar rahe hain aur phir bhi Hasdeo barbaad ho raha hai toh hamari niraasha ke saath saath aakrosh hona bhi jayaz hai (our CM is a tribal, the President of India is a tribal, the Prime Minister has launched the JANMAN scheme but Hasdeo is being destroyed; it is natural for us to not just be upset but also angry),” Armo said.