Alirajpur (Madhya Pradesh): The Congress, on Wednesday, announced a mass movement against the BJP government's decision to auction thousands of hectares of land for mining in tribal-dominated areas in Alirajpur district.
Former district president Mahesh Patel and Jobat MLA Sena Patel during a press conference termed it as a 'mining conspiracy'. They criticised the auctioning of vast hectares of land in Alirajpur district and the inclusion of 600 hectares in the mining process.
They accused the government of deceiving the tribal community by keeping them uninformed about these developments. Mahesh Patel provided a detailed information, stating that the central and state governments have identified various lands for mineral mining in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.
Specifically, in the Jobat assembly constituency, thousands of hectares have been earmarked for mining, with additional blocks included in neighbouring Dhar district.
He highlighted that in 2003, then-President APJ Abdul Kalam declared Jhabua-Alirajpur as a scheduled area, but the BJP government has ignored this designation.
Patel said that six blocks in the Jobat area have already been determined for mining, covering approximately 4,000 hectares of land. He accused the central and state governments of conspiring to displace tribal communities from their ancestral lands.
The destruction of tribal land would cause irreparable damage to the tribal communities' livelihood, as well as severe damage to the environment and wildlife, with a possible worsening of human-elephant conflict.
Tribal people have spent knocking with all their might on every door to protect their sacred and vital land but the government has chosen to prioritise mining above the rights of tribal and indigenous people and India's constitution and laws, he said.
