'Pro-corporate agenda': Odisha crackdown on tribal slum dwellers fighting for land rights

By Our Representative
The civil rights network Campaign Against State Repression (CASR), even as condemning what it calls “brutal repression” on the Adivasi slum dwellers of Salia Sahi in Bhubaneshwar by the Odisha police, has said that the crackdown was against the tribals struggling for land rights in order to “stop the attempts at land-grab by the government.”
On 22nd November 2023, almost 20,000 slum dwellers of Salia Sahi Slum in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, marched to the State Legislative Assembly raising various demands with regards to their land rights in Salia Sahi Slum. Various slum movement activists of Odisha were also part of this march.
According to CASR, “The protest march by the slum dwellers was ruthlessly crushed by the Odisha police. They detained thousands of those protesters, which also included Jayadev Nayak, the President of Salia Sahi Anchalik Committee, Pramila, Odisha State Secretary of CPI(ML) Red Star, and many other activists of Basti Surakshya Mancha.”
The protesters, said CASR, were “raising demands for the implementation of Forest Rights Act, 2006, which says that the Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers should be given the right to land, livelihood, habitation and other socio-cultural needs.”
Claimed the civil rights group, “75% of Salia Sahi slum dwellers are Adivasis and they come under the ambit of ‘traditional forest dwellers’, of the Act. Also, they opposed the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government’s plan to encroach their lands to implement their pro-corporate agendas in the name of road construction and ‘development’.”
Stating that the BJD government has provided land rights to many slum dwellers of Bhubaneswar under the pressure of the slum movement, CASR regretted, “Still, Salia Sahi was excluded from that. That's why, Salia Sahi slum dwellers came to the streets as a result of the intolerable oppression they have been facing for several years due to lack of land rights.”
Contending that under the Naveen Patnaik government unleashing “undemocratic repression” has become a norm, CASR cited the instance of how nine activists of the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti were arrested and abducted by the police and slapped the anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Citing more instances, it said, “In Mali Parbat, similar land struggle is going on the protect the local Mali as Adivasis fend off state repression at the service of big corporations seeking to grab their lands. In Sijimali, Odisha, the people gave a resounding response during the public hearing for the Sijimali bauxite block and Vedanta Limited.”

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