Locals in India’s Odisha allege forgery behind land taken for Adani mine

Koraput, India – Raghunath Khara was shocked to look at his thumb impression on a piece of paper that declared he had consented to a government proposal to mine his village’s pristine forest land for bauxite. “I always sign in English. It was someone else’s thumb,” alleged Khara, a shopkeeper in Balda village in the tribal-dominated Koraput district of Odisha state in eastern India. Khara is among hundreds of people from Indigenous tribes in Balda and neighbouring Bannur village who have lost their lands to the new bauxite mine. It is being developed by Kalinga Alumina Limited, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Limited, a conglomerate owned by Gautam Adani, India’s second richest businessman and close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.