A group of academics, activists, lawyers, students, filmmakers and concerned citizens has demanded the withdrawal of security personnel from the site of a controversial solar power plant in Assam that threatens to dispossess Adivasi and Karbi tribal farmers of their land in the midst of the country’s worst phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The group of 153 signatories has also asked the authorities to stop the construction on Azure Power’s solar plant until the contested claims over the land in Nagaon district’s Mikir Bamuni Grand are settled besides taking action against officials who submitted false reporters regarding cultivation and tenancy rights.
“For more than a year, the Karbi and Adivasi farmers of Mikir Bamuni Grant village have been fighting to protect their lands, forcibly taken over by Azure Power Forty Private Limited for building a solar power plant. The land in question was cleared and cultivated by the ancestors of these farmers for generations,” a statement issued by the group said on Tuesday.
The farmers possess inheritable occupancy rights to the land in the form of a ‘khatiyan’ (government document mentioning the first landowner) that was issued to their families in 1981. Ignoring their rights, the land was sold by descendants of the original land grant holder to Azure Power in August 2020, the statement said.
Multiple title suits
“While multiple title suits challenging Azure Power’s claims to ownership over the land are ongoing in the Nagaon district court, and the land stands as disputed, Azure Power has refused to take into account the gross violations involved in sale of the land to them,” it said.
“The land in question was sold to the solar power firm by eight family members of the descendants of the grant holder of Mikir Bamuni Grant. This was done in gross violation of the Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1956, by transferring 276 bighas of land to a single family, even as the ceiling limits it to not more than 50 bighas,” it said.
“It was further done without first settling the rights of tenant cultivators to the land, as held under the Assam (Temporarily Settled Areas) Tenancy Act, 1971. These two key legislations that aim to democratise land ownership in Assam and ensure land to the tiller have been blatantly ignored, violated and trampled on, in order to unlawfully place the land exclusively in the hands of the landowner, who had no right to sell the land to Azure Power in the first place,” the statement said.
Farmers jailed for protesting
The farmers said they had been jailed at least twice for protesting the forceful takeover of the land under heavy police protection and violence against them.
Fourteen farmers were arrested on October 8, 2020, after the firm took possession of the land after 200 bighas of ripened paddy crop was destroyed. Four more were arrested after a “brutal midnight raid” on December 29 when the villagers resisted construction work on their lands. They were kept in prison for 63 days.
In contrast, no action has been taken against officials who gave a false report saying the solar power site in Mikir Bamuni Grant was not under cultivation for the last 10 years.
“Ignoring all the violations involved in the transfer of land to Azure Power, the company has repeatedly used State security forces to bulldoze their way into the village, grab the land, and terrorise the villagers into accepting the power plant,” the statement said.
On May 10, the firm re-entered the village with a large contingent of CRPF personnel to “once again terrorise the villagers and suppress their right” to resist the takeover of their land through “coercion, violence and fear”, the statement said, demanding that the land be returned to the cultivating farmers.
The signatories include Medha Patkar of Narmada Bachao Andolan, academic Virginius Xaxa, Prafulla Samantara of Odisha-based Lokshakti Abhiyan, Pune-based environmental researcher Ashish Kothari and former Assam Minister Holiram Terang.