India's highest court has dealt a damaging blow to a British-based mining company's £1.1bn plan to dig for bauxite on land deemed sacred by local people, saying local tribal councils would make the final decision on whether the project should go ahead.
In what campaigners said was a major victory for the rights of tribal people, the supreme court yesterday rejected a request from Vedanta Resources to end a ban on the proposed mining. Instead, it asked two local councils to respond within three months on whether or not they want the mining to proceed.
"If the project affects their religious rights, especially their right to worship their deity, known as Niyam Raja, in the hills top of the Niyamgiri range of hills, that right has to be preserved and protected," the court ruled. The site, in India's eastern state of Orissa, is home to about 10,000 members of the Dongria Kondh tribe, whose members survive as subsistence hunters and farmers. They consider the hills to be a living god and have always resisted attempts to mine the land. They say that the mine would destroy their way of life.
There was no immediate word from tribe members. However, the lawyer who has represented them, Sanjay Parikh, said in a statement that the decision supported the tribe against the interests of multinationals. "The historic judgment delivered by the court recognises the community, cultural and religious rights of tribals," he added. Full story...
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In what campaigners said was a major victory for the rights of tribal people, the supreme court yesterday rejected a request from Vedanta Resources to end a ban on the proposed mining. Instead, it asked two local councils to respond within three months on whether or not they want the mining to proceed.
"If the project affects their religious rights, especially their right to worship their deity, known as Niyam Raja, in the hills top of the Niyamgiri range of hills, that right has to be preserved and protected," the court ruled. The site, in India's eastern state of Orissa, is home to about 10,000 members of the Dongria Kondh tribe, whose members survive as subsistence hunters and farmers. They consider the hills to be a living god and have always resisted attempts to mine the land. They say that the mine would destroy their way of life.
There was no immediate word from tribe members. However, the lawyer who has represented them, Sanjay Parikh, said in a statement that the decision supported the tribe against the interests of multinationals. "The historic judgment delivered by the court recognises the community, cultural and religious rights of tribals," he added. Full story...
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