Home > 2026 > The Protest in Sijimali in Odisha: A Historic Moment in People’s Struggle (…)

Mainstream, Vol 64 No 16, June 12, 2026

The Protest in Sijimali in Odisha: A Historic Moment in People’s Struggle for Right to Homeland | Suranjita Ray

Friday 12 June 2026, by Suranjita Ray

Rich in bauxite reserves and biodiversity, and situated at the edge of the sanctuary’s eco-sensitive zone, the Sijimali hills in Kalahandi and Rayagada districts in Odisha has been at the center of conflict between the developmental state and the people’s right to forest land and livelihood. For the last several months, a large gathering of indigenous people on the lower reaches of the hills has been protesting against the bauxite mining project of Vedanta Limited, one of the largest mining companies in the country. The ongoing protest in Sijimali hills is because the Kandha and Paroja Scheduled Tribes and forest-dwelling Scheduled Castes who have lived in this region ever since they can recollect the memories of their oldest generations, fear the loss of their right to their homeland.
They fear displacement, destruction, and loss of their customary rights to the forest land and its produce. The mining operations will destroy the panichida-shuagad river, waterfalls and a hundred perennial streams in the mountain range. The village communities depend on these streams for growing minor millets, rice, and vegetables. They not only depend on the Sijimali hills for their livelihood, but the hills in this region are also culturally sacred. The local communities believe that the Tiji Raja worship site will be destroyed.

While the officials of Vedanta Limited convince that there are no waterfalls in the mining lease area, the groundwater will not be affected, and there is very little vegetation and forestation in the bauxite areas, social activists and environmental activists argue that the mining activities will impact the entire mountain range and thereby destroy the waterfalls, streams, vegetation, forestation, ecology, and biodiversity (see also Jain and Tiwari, 2026). Environmental activist Prafulla Samantara, social activist Mehda Patkar, and Narendra Mohanty, lawyer and state convenor of the Campaign Against Fabricated Cases, argue that destruction of the streams will end the cultivation of millets and other agricultural activities in the region. The local tribal and Dalit communities are opposing the diversion of the forestland for the construction of road and mining projects, as they allege violations of forest rights, threats to their religious beliefs, increasing environmental degradation, and the disputed Gram Sabha resolutions.

Diversion of Forest Land

The clash between the police and the protesting villagers on April 7, 2026, against the construction of the road in Kashipur in the Rayagada district left many police and villagers injured (Ray, 2026). The villagers dispute the claims of the district officials that the diversion of 708 hectares of forest land was consented to in the Gram Sabha meetings held on December 8, 2023. They have alleged that these meetings were held forcibly and were fraudulent and are against FRA, 2006. They had moved the Orissa High Court last year, seeking to quash the Gram Sabha resolutions. Activist Sharanya Nayak states how manufacturing of consent is at the heart of the resistance to the construction of roads, mining projects, or any related activity (Barik, 2026). Though the authorities have been directed by the court to look into the grievances pertaining to the settlement of forest rights, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) issued the final stage II forest clearance for the access road to the government of Odisha on 5 May 2026. The forest clearance for the access road was based on what IDCO later called a ‘non-mining project’.

The Reporters’ Collective finds that while the forest clearance was an essential requirement to construct the road and was integral to the mining project, ‘the proposal was split into three distinct projects - the construction of the road was to be owned by the Public Works Department, Odisha’s industrial authority, Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO), acted as the proxy to secure the forest clearance, and Vedanta, the mining company, would construct the road with IDCO’s permission’(Kar, 2026). 

While the construction of a 2.98-km greenfield road from Sijimali to Vedanta’s Lanjigarh alumina refinery will divert 4.911 hectares of forest land and would be used for the transportation of bauxite, IDCO had claimed that the road would serve the ‘broader purpose’ of connecting five villages - Dumerpadar, Porlang, Sagabari, Bichapinda, and Malipadar. It claimed that these villages at present face serious hardships due to the lack of road connectivity, especially in accessing healthcare, markets, and essential services. These claims have been questioned by the Reporters’ Collective, which finds that four out of the five villages - Porlang, Bichapinda, Sagabari, and Dumerpadar are much closer to State Highway 44 than the proposed road by IDCO (Ibid). Further, the existing pakka road connects Sagabari and Dumerpadar directly to the state highway. Also, Porlang is a walking distance from the highway. And since Malipadar falls within the Sijimali mining block proposed to be mined by Vedanta, the villagers will be evicted. As per the 2011 Census, Bichapinda village remains uninhabited (Ibid).

The splitting of the road project from the larger Sijimali mine project is a contested issue and has been placed before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on 27 February 2026. The NGT is yet to give its verdict. The tribal villagers filed a plea on 11 May 2026 in the NGT’s eastern zone bench challenging the final clearance by appealing ‘the in-principle approval that was granted to the forest clearance for the access road’.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Railways announced a new broad-gauge line connecting Tikiri Station to the Sijimali and Kutrumali bauxite hills in Odisha’s Rayagada and Kalahandi districts. The project for a rail corridor designed to connect the mineral resource rich region to the industrial zone raises serious questions about how Odisha is on the cusp of a corporate state. The proposed railway project to transport massive bauxite reserves to facilitate industrial development has sparked a massive debate on the conflict between the pro-capitalist development policies of the state and indigenous people’s rights.

Uprooting from Ancestral Home

The villagers, in particular women holding axes who are at the forefront of protests, did not give up their struggle. They gathered in large numbers from morning to evening to save their livelihood resources. For generations, they have had access to the forestland, water resources and the sacred hills. It has been the only source of their livelihood. It is the future of their children. The narratives of the villagers are important. They unmask how the state that handed over vast areas of natural resources such as mining, fertile land, water and forest reserves to the corporate sector and international finance capital to secure industrial and economic growth has resulted in deprivation and alienation of large masses of the villagers from their livelihood resources.

We see the writings on the walls - ‘Vedanta Go Back’ and ‘No Mining on Adivasi Land’ alongside the ongoing resistance by the village communities in the Sijimali hills which raise the slogan that ‘they will rather die than leave their homeland’ (‘maribu pache bhita mati chadibu nahin’). The slogan conveys deep emotional value as it represents their roots and sense of belonging to their ancestral home. The villagers worship the hills as their deity and are determined to fight until the end. Narangi Dei Majhi from Sagabari village, who belongs to the tribal community, argues that ‘We will not sell our Maa, Mati, aur Mali, (Mother, Land, and Mountain)’ (Shukla, 2026). She alleges how approval of the mining project was manipulated in the gram sabha. The assertion by the local communities to safeguard their land, water bodies, forests, livelihoods, environment, and cultural identity gained support from several civil rights and human rights activists, environmental rights groups, and social action groups, who expressed their solidarity with the movement. This is a historic moment in the people’s struggle for their right to livelihood resources – jal, jungle, aur jameen (water, forest, and land).

Samarendra Das, who has been working on the impact of mining on tribal communities, explains how the thick layer of bauxite on the top of the hills acts like a natural sponge, which soaks up the rainwater (Ibid). This water is released slowly throughout the year, thereby feeding the springs and streams below. He argues that open-cast mining will rip away the entire layer, and when the bauxite is removed, the water system collapses. The springs then turn into dirty seasonal trickles. The damage is not only confined to the mining site but also affects the entire river system downstream. The villagers in Kantamal argue that their paddy fields remain waterlogged even during the summer due to the water retaining properties of the bauxite-rich hills (see also Barik, 2026). They believe that they sustain their lives due to the Sijimali and the bauxite-bearing hills surrounding them.

The protest against the mining project raises several concerns regarding the conflicting interests of the corporate state and the local communities and the violation of the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act 1996, and the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006. Though the official documents state that 129 households will be displaced in the two villages – 51 households in Tijimali and 78 households in Malipadar, and they will be resettled in the colonies at Kurkuti and Chandgiri in the Kalahandi and Rayagada districts, respectively, civil rights activists argue that the mining operations will impact around 45 villages in the mountain ranges which inhabit 35,000 households (Jain and Tiwari, 2026).

The irony is that despite the ongoing protests against the project, the Expert Appraisal Committee recommended environmental clearance for Vedanta’s bauxite mine in Sijimali on May 15, 2026. However, the recommendation of environmental clearance is incumbent on the specific condition that “no mining activities shall be carried out in 709.72 hectares without obtaining stage-II forest clearance”. The panel also laid down a specific condition that the company will have to abide by all orders and judicial pronouncements on two project-related cases, one pending in the Supreme Court and another in NGT.

The National Alliance of People’s Movement (NAPM) on May 28, 2026 has urged the MoEF&CC to reject the recommendation for environmental clearance to start mining operations in Sijimali. They asserted how several claims regarding the community forest rights and individual forest rights have been pending during the last three years. Arbitrary arrests have put several villagers behind the bars for the past many months as they were part of the protests against the mining project. Activist Ranjana Padhi states how arrests have intensified since 2023 and more than 50 villagers have been arrested and hundreds, including pregnant women, have been named in different cases (Barik, 2026). The leaders of NAPM foresee a massive intensification of the people’s movement if the demands of the villagers are not met.

The Prolonged Confrontation

The neoliberal state has been successful not only in restoring the interest of the capitalist class but also in manufacturing consent for its campaign for a market economy. Increasing land acquisition for development projects has become a recurrent phenomenon in the last two decades in Odisha. Such projects have mounted resistance and protests by people. The state has usurped powers to itself to either undermine people’s struggles or crush them in the name of law and order. The state resorts to greater use of force and violence to frighten the villagers so that they abandon all their rights to the livelihood resources. Denial of rights to basic livelihood is what they encounter in their everyday experience.

We have seen the use of force by the state against people protesting to protect their livelihood resources, whether it is the betel vines in Baliapal and Dhinkia, the bauxite mountains of Gandhamardhan, Kashipur, and Niyamagiri, the waters of Chilika, or the forests of Narayanpatna. The increasing coercive response of the state converted these areas into constant conflict zones. Despite the police force, the villagers in the Sijimali hills have remained consistently vigilant for months together. They have lived in makeshift arrangements to guard against any construction work related to the mining project. The villagers argue that nothing can compensate for their loss of customary rights to forest lands, water resources, vegetation, and sacred hills. Physical uprooting of the villagers from their habitat is a traumatic experience and results in a sense of isolation and alienation from the community, and culture, and loss of one’s identity. The prolonged confrontation with the state has raised serious questions about its nature. The protests for people’s rights will resonate in the political economy of Odisha.

People’s unrest and resistance against land acquisition have largely questioned the development policies that resulted in deprivations and denial of rights. The paradox of growth strategy is evident from the fact that deprivations and continuing distress amongst certain sections make the paradoxes of development conspicuous. The strategy of development should protect citizens’ basic needs, ecological sustainability, and socio-economic justice. There is a need to conserve and regenerate the forest ecosystem for a sustainable livelihood in the hilly and inland regions of Odisha. The neoliberal state needs to rework and reinvent the strategies to negotiate instead of suppressing people’s protests against the state’s narrow-minded development agenda (reinforced in the agenda of Viksit Odisha 2036), which facilitates handing over productive resources to the corporate sector. Development needs to be liberated from a fixed delineation and preconceived notion outlined by the market economy designed by the corporate sector.

(Author: Suranjita Ray, teaches Political Science in Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi. Email: suranjitaray[at]dr.du.ac.in )

References

  • Barik, Satyasundar (2026), ‘Mining Push meets Tribal Resistance’ in The Hindu, April 17, p 6.