Centre team forced to do aerial survey

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, Dec 21'2011: Fearing tribals’ ire, a high-power committee, appointed by the MoEF, conducted aerial survey of Jerella and Sapparla divisions in Chintapalli, where large scale bauxite reserves are available, in a helicopter to avoid entering agency area by road.

The committee members, along with district collector, Lav Agarwal, chief conservator of forests Pratheek Kumar, APMDC senior official Mukesh Kumar Meena and other district officials made three sorties in the air and studied the area.

Protesting against the Committee’s visit, all tribal leaders, cutting across party lines, called for total shutdown of the agency areas on December 20 and 21. The bandh was a total success in all the 11 agency mandals, with not even a bicycle seen plying on the roads.

The tribal leaders also threatened the members of dire consequences if they tried to enter the region.
Some tribals even blocked major routes and roads that lead to those areas bauxite where reserves are available.

On Wednesday, the committee and the officials made two sorties. On Thursday, the committee would be holding a meeting to elicit opinions from the tribals, NGOs and voluntary organizations on the proposed mining.

However, the all-party forum that was launched recently to agitate against bauxite mining, called for a boycott of the meeting.

“Its unfortunate that the high power committee appointed by MoEF to study bauxite mining affects did not visit those places where tribals are going to be affected,” G. Srinivas, the coordinator of Samata, an NGO working for tribal rights, said.

Mr Srinivas also raised concerns over state government allegedly pushing hard to get clearances from the Centre to mine for bauxite.

He said, “Jairam Ramesh, when he was heading the MoEF, had announced that both Chintapalle and Sesshachalam forest areas would be reserved as biosphere areas, but the state government sent proposals only for Sesshachalam hill range and told centre that 'bio-sphere' tag would hamper mining activities in the Chintapalle forest region. I fail to understand why the state is favouring bauxite mining.”