Sundargarh, Odisha: On 26 January 2020, 40-year-old Litu Minz, a quiet, slightly built farmer, along with hundreds of others from neighbouring villages, attended a meeting of five gram sabhas, or village assemblies, in the northwestern district of Sundargarh in Odisha, where—as the law allowed them to—they rejected a proposal to expand a mine in their area. 

The gram sabha meeting was called for the villagers to decide on Dalmia Cement Bharat Limited's land acquisition proposal to expand the 73-year-old limestone and dolomite mines in an area of dry deciduous forest, scrubland, and agricultural fields called Lanjiberna.

Limestone is a key raw material for cement manufacturing. 

Villagers who live near the Lanjiberna mines said that their land was acquired by Orissa Cement Limited (OCL)—Dalmia Bharat Group gained majority stakes in OCL in the early 2010s—in the 1980s, and that the company had not met its promises to provide them jobs. 

The villagers said they are not ready to relinquish their land and resources for the new expansion plan.

In 2021, the government of Odisha began acquiring land by publishing preliminary notifications before obtaining gram sabha consent, contrary to the procedure listed in the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR), 2013.

On 6 September 2024, the Odisha High Court dismissed a writ petition from 12 villagers aiming to block land acquisition for the Lanjiberna mine expansion. 

The court ruled that 11 of the 12 petitioners were not the “recorded tenants” of the land in question, that the social impact assessment found that “most of the people from three affected villagers did not oppose the acquisition”,  and that the State had undertaken the acquisition “as the last demonstrable resort”.

The court also ruled that as the State government was “acquiring the said land for its own use, hold and control”, and that as Dalmia Cement was just leasing the land from the government rather than acquiring it, “the mandatory requirement as for the acquisition of land for private companies requiring prior consent of at least 80% of the affected family...does not arise”.

Advocate Balakrishna Rao, who represented the petitioners in the high court, said that the court's judgment focused on leasing the land. He questioned the claim that the land was being acquired for the state’s use and asked why Dalmia, a private entity, proposed the land acquisition.

“It was Dalmia that sought the acquisition…The state went ahead at the insistence of Dalmia only,” Rao said. “The Land Acquisition Act mandates consent in schedule five areas.”

A 2014 ordinance from the ministry of rural development exempts five categories of land use—defence, rural infrastructure, affordable housing, industrial corridors, and infrastructure projects—from the prior consent provision of the LARR Act.

The petitioners challenged the high court ruling in the Supreme Court in December 2024, seeking a stay on the land acquisition. The case is ongoing.

Bibol Toppo, a 46-year-old resident of Kukuda village, local activist, and petitioner in the case, said that authorities did not update their names in the land ownership records and that his father is listed as one of the land owners. 

“It was the deliberate negligence of the authorities, that’s why our names are not there, and the court did not find legitimacy in our ownership,” said Toppo.

“When the gram sabha itself rejected the expansion proposal, how can you proceed with the acquisition?” Toppo added. “We have challenged this acquisition in the Supreme Court.” 

Illegally Bypassed Laws

The Kukuda Gram Sabha case—whose land Dalmia Cement was trying to acquire for its mine expansion—is one of 136 cases of land acquisition flagged by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in a report published on 11 September 2024, just five days after the high court ruling. 

According to the report, the land acquired for the Lanjiberna mine expansion was for a private company, Dalmia Cement, rather than the government's own use.  

According to the CAG, in each of these 136 cases, state authorities illegally bypassed the LARR and the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), 1996, to push through projects.

Activists in the region said they were unaware of such large-scale violations in land acquisitions in scheduled Odisha areas until the CAG report's release.

“We are planning to challenge all the remaining 135 cases that CAG report flagged,” said Toppo. 

Article 14 sought comment from the district collectors of Sundargarh, Koraput, Kalahandi, and Mayurbhanj districts in Odisha via email on 8 April, 29 April, and 30 April, 2025. There was no reply. 

Follow-up phone calls were made to official numbers on 11 and 18 April, which either went unanswered or failed to connect. We also sent SMS and WhatsApp messages on 21 April. There was no reply. We will update this story if there is a response.

The CAG report, covering the period from 2017 to 2022, audited land management in Odisha’s Scheduled Areas—regions that fall under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, mainly inhabited by tribal communities, and which receive special protections for indigenous rights, culture, and land. 

Despite these legal safeguards, land across the four districts of Kalahandi, Koraput, Mayurbhanj, and Sundargarh, was processed for acquisition “without conducting GS meetings, disregarding the views of the GS, obtaining consent of the GS without the required quorum, conducting GS meeting after issue of preliminary notification”, according to the CAG. 

The audit report also revealed that in several cases, key gram sabha records were missing, and authorities failed to provide documentation justifying land acquisition decisions.

The findings are a damning indictment of how authorities undermine the rights of Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes in Odisha. It further raises concerns about the weakening of constitutional protections for marginalised communities in Scheduled Areas when authorities fail to follow the laws of the land. 

Article 14 sought comment from Odisha’s minister of revenue and disaster management via phone calls on 18 April and email on 5 May. There was no reply. We will update this story if there is a response.

Data from Land Conflict Watch (LCW), an independent network of researchers studying land conflicts, climate change and natural resource governance, showed at least six ongoing conflicts related to land acquisition in Odisha. 

These conflicts were over 98,815 hectares of land, more than double the size of Mumbai, and home to at least 100,000 people. Two of the six cases were over land in Odisha’s Scheduled Areas.

Gram Sabhas Undermined

In Scheduled Areas, like the Sundargarh district, land acquisition is primarily governed by the 2013 LARR and the 1996 PESA. 

The LARR states that land acquisition in Scheduled Areas should only take place as a “last resort” and that if land has to be acquired, prior consent must be obtained from the gram sabha, the panchayats, or the Autonomous District Councils. 

Once such consent is granted, only then can the authorities issue a “preliminary notification”, the official announcement by the government about its intent to acquire land. This preliminary notification is issued under Section 11 of the LARR.

The PESA also mandates that the gram sabha or panchayats must be consulted before any land acquisition in Scheduled Areas.

Accordingly, on 6 January 2020, the sub-collector of Sundargarh district issued letters to the sarpanches, or heads, of the Kukuda and Katang Gram Panchayats to conduct gram sabhas on 26 January 2020, for the acquisition of 406.74, 27.51, and 39.01 acres of land in Kukuda, Lanjiberna, and Bihabandh village, respectively. 

The sub-collector of Sundargarh district also sent letters to the sarpanches of the Alanda, Kesharmal, and Jhagarpur Gram Panchayats on 10 January 2020.

Toppo, the local activist whose land fell under the acquisition proposal, said that on 26 January 2020, gram sabhas were conducted in all five panchayats, and all the gram sabhas opposed the expansion of the mine.

“From the start, we stood united against giving land for mining,” said Minz, the farmer. “In the gram sabha, every panchayat raised one voice—not an inch of land would be given.” 

The gram sabha resolution of the Kukuda Gram Panchayat, accessed by Article 14, showed that the proposal was rejected with more than 400 signatories. 

The resolution said, “On the matter of acquisition of land for Dalmia Cement India Limited (OCL), Sarapanch of Kukuda GP Ms Rilla Susila Toppo moved a proposal whether land shall be given to OCL or not? Today, on 26 January 2020, in a special meeting of the GS on agenda No. 6, all the villagers present in the meeting unanimously resolved not to give an inch of land to OCL.”

Despite The Rejection

Rilla Susila Toppo, the sarpanch of the Kukuda Gram Panchayat confirmed that after a discussion, the proposal was unanimously rejected and their decision recorded.

Despite the gram sabha’s rejection, and in the midst of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, on 18 March 2021, the Sundargarh sub-collector issued a notification stating that the draft Social Impact Assessment (SIA) report for the land acquisition was ready and had to be discussed by the villagers of the Kukuda and Katang Gram Panchayats on 16 April. 

The Odisha SIA unit of the Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies in Bhubaneswar prepared the SIA report. 

The sarpanches of Kukuda and Katang wrote to the sub-collector on 13 April, stating that, given the pandemic, they could not conduct a public hearing, and did not issue any public hearing notices to their respective villages. 

“Even after that, they got pictures somewhere and showed that they had conducted the public hearing,” said Toppo, the local activist. 

Subsequently, the state authorities proceeded with the land acquisition process and published preliminary notifications in July and December 2021 for land in the villages of Kukuda, Bihabandh, Lanjiberna, Kesharmal, Raiberna, Alanda, Bihaband, Kukuda, and Jhagarpur.

The CAG report documents this entire process in detail and notes that the land acquisition “was irregular” and that the locals “were deprived of the legal safeguards”.

A Pattern of Disregard

The CAG report reveals that the Kukuda Gram Panchayat case is not an outlier, and land acquisition across Fifth Schedule districts in the state is riddled with violations. 

Between March 2018 and December 2021, the Sundargarh district collector alone issued preliminary notifications for 64 cases of land acquisition, covering 1,528.91 acres. 

The CAG found that preliminary notifications were issued in 29 of the 64 cases, involving 1,165.265 acres of land, despite clear rejections from the respective gram sabhas. 

The CAG recorded only three cases, involving 8.12 acres of land, in the district where the gram sabha consent had been given for acquisition. 

For the remaining 32 cases, the State did not make any documentation or records available to the auditor. In addition, CAG queries to the Sundergarh collector on the irregularities went unanswered.

Himanshu Upadhyaya, a professor of development studies, with over two decades of experience in researching CAG audit reports, said gram sabha decisions could be viewed as referendums.

He said any land acquisition in which gram sabha consent is disregarded or cannot be verified by an audit must be considered null and void.

“People have suffered because the executive authorities have failed to safeguard the provisions of Schedule V as per the Constitution,” said Upadhyaya.

Missing Records

The irregularities in land acquisition were not limited to disregarding the gram  sabha consent. 

According to the CAG report, in over 100 cases across the four districts, records were missing, land acquisitions proceeded without the required gram sabha meetings, consent was obtained without the required quorum, and meetings were conducted only after preliminary notifications had already been published.

The audit found that between 2017 and 2022, in at least 73 cases across the 4 districts, land acquisition was done without even conducting the gram sabha meetings. 

These 73 cases involved 297.5 acres of land for projects such as the Telengiri Major Irrigation Project (TMIP), the Talcher-Bimlagarh Rail Link Project (TBRLP), the Ret Irrigation Project (RIP) and for roads and approach roads for bridges.

In the case of the TMIP, preliminary notifications were issued between February 2016 and January 2021 without conducting gram sabha meetings for the acquisition of 37.36 acres of land in Koraput district. 

The report notes that these preliminary notifications were issued based on gram sabha meetings held “one to nine years earlier” for acquiring different land in the same villages. 

For the TBRLP, involving 247.64 acres of land in Sundargarh district, the auditor could not find any evidence of gram sabha meetings being conducted. 

The report notes that the special land acquisition officer of TBRLP claimed that gram sabha meetings had been conducted before issuing preliminary notifications, but the case records “were not readily traceable”.

“How can a special land acquisition officer and revenue authorities in scheduled areas, who are in charge of the records, say that gram sabhas have happened, but the records are not traceable?” said Upadhyaya. “If records are not traceable, it should be regarded as a very serious misconduct on the part of the executive, and responsibility must be fixed.”

Invalid Quorums And Other Violations

The audit further revealed that in 24 additional cases of land acquisition in the four districts, consent of gram sabhas was obtained without the required quorum. 

According to LARR’s Social Impact Assessment and Consent Rules, a valid quorum requires at least 50% of the total gram sabha members, with at least one-third of the sabha’s women members in attendance.

Between April 2021 and July 2022, the collectors of Koraput and Nabarangpur districts issued preliminary notifications for 41 cases, involving 871.246 acres of land for the Jeypore-Nabarangpur and Jeypore-Malkanagiri Rail Link Projects. 

These notifications were based on gram sabha consent. However, the CAG found that in 24 of these cases, the gram sabha meeting attendance was between 0.30% and 8.80%, while the women members did not participate.

In 10 more cases of land acquisition, for 71.897 acres of land for six projects in Koraput district, south-west Odisha, the CAG initially found that the collector issued preliminary notifications before conducting gram sabha meetings. 

Following further scrutiny, the CAG found that the meetings “had been conducted without quorum, land acquisition proposals had either been refused in the gram sabha meetings, or the resolutions did not explicitly contain a statement of consent to the project, rendering them invalid.”

In the gram sabha resolutions for the Admunda and Petujodinala Minor Irrigation Projects (MIP), CAG found that gram sabha meetings did not even mention the project names. 

For instance, the gram sabha proceedings for Phulbeda Village in the district of Koraput, conducted to acquire 15.81 acres of land for the Admunda MIP, did not include the project name.

“What puzzles me is that even with these kinds of serious and grievous violations, the collector is not even bothering to reply to audit findings,” said Upadhyaya. 

 Upadhyaya criticised the failure to provide records, delayed responses, and lack of cooperation during audits, calling it a “serious issue”. 

“Executive authorities are accountable to the public, not corporate or political interests. Constitutional audit institutions must be sacrosanct,” he added.

Toppo, the activist from Kukuda, said that even though the authorities went ahead with the land acquisition, the affected villagers are prepared to defy any attempt by the authorities to take over their land.

“They tried to silence us,” said Minz. “But we are still here, and we are still fighting.”

(Mahmodul Hassan is a journalist covering the intersections of human rights, natural resource conflicts, social justice and policy and is currently a research fellow at Land Conflict Watch, a network researching land conflicts, climate change, and resource governance in India.)

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