Indian coal companies have taken advantage of opaque laws to acquire land and tap new reserves of the mineral – often, in the process, violating the rights of the indigenous or Adivasi communities inhabiting these parts, a report released by Amnesty International India has found.

The human rights organisation, which released the report on Wednesday, has documented how companies have used legal loopholes to deny Adivasi inhabitants of these areas a say in land acquisition and rehabilitation. Amnesty also indicts various state governments and India's environment ministry for standing by while the companies got their projects off the ground in this manner.

Familiar tale

“Adivasi communities in these areas complain that they have been routinely shut out from decision-making processes around their traditional lands, rights and resources,” the report said. “Many have had to wait for decades for the compensation and rehabilitation they were promised.”

Since 1973, state-owned mining company Coal India Limited and its subsidiaries have displaced around 87,000 people including 14,000 Adivasis, the report said.

A bulk of coal in India is located in the states of Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh and Odisha, which together house about a quarter of the country's tribal population.

The reason why the coal companies find it easy to acquire land without much obstruction is because the Adivasi inhabitants rarely get to know that their land is being taken away from them.

Take the case of Mahendra Singh Kanwar from Kusmunda in Chhattisgarh, whom Amnesty interviewed in 2014. Kusmunda is one of the largest opencast coal mines in the country. To expand its production, the Ministry of Coal put out notices in 2009 to acquire land in four villages around the mine, one of which is Padaniya, where Kanwar lives.

“We did not receive any notice about our land being acquired," Kanwar told Amnesty. "We only heard recently that SECL [South Eastern Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of Coal India] now owns all our land.” Kanwar does not know when he will be compensated for the land.

Kanwar was not the only one caught unawares. In 2014, South Eastern Coalfields Limited declared it would quadruple production in the mine, which involved acquiring more villages, with about 13,000 inhabitants.

The coal ministry published a notification regarding this and even invited objections from people within 30 days. But many residents of these five affected villages did not know about the notice.

“The acquisition notice was pasted on the wall of the office of the panchayat," Vidya Vinod Mahant from Amgaon village said. "How do we object to this?”

Others said that they received no responses to their objections.

Legal loopholes

The government can acquire land under the Coal Bearing Areas (Acquisition and Development) Act, 1957. This Act requires the government only to publish a statement of intent in the official gazette to acquire the land.

“There is no requirement to consult affected communities, or seek the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples, as stipulated by international law,” the report said.

The law further states that anyone who objects to the acquisition and can claim a compensation can file written objections with the competent authority under the Coal Ministry within 30 days. However, the government takes a final call on whether or not the acquisition is necessary.

A Parliamentary committee in 2007 pointed out that the problem with publishing notices in the official gazette was that most people who are affected “live in far-flung areas” where they may not have access to the publication. Additionally, many residents of villages in these belts are not formally literate and are not aware of their right to ask for rehabilitation or compensation.

“The law [Coal Bearing Areas Act] also has no provisions for ensuring that human rights impact assessments are conducted prior to land acquisition proceedings," the report said. "There are no requirements to consult with non-landowners who may be affected by land acquisition, such as landless labourers whose livelihoods are dependent on the land to be acquired. The law also does not offer adequate protection to communities from forced evictions."

It added: "The Act undermines communities’ security of tenure and creates the legal basis for CIL [Coal India Limited] to operate without due regard for the impact of its operations on human rights."

Regulations not followed

Even in cases where legal provisions clearly state the need to hold consultations with the affected populace prior to acquisition, the regulations are not followed in full, the report said.

The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 mandates the companies to hold consultations with occupants for them to voice their concerns. But these are often done perfunctorily.

Further, the Environment Impact Assessment notification says that public hearings need to be widely publicised. Prior to the hearings, the company is required to submit a copy of the draft Environmental Impact Assessment to district officials, who, in turn, have to make them publicly available, so that people are aware of the risks of the proposed project.

But, Amnesty claimed that hardly anyone is ever able to understand the reports’ contents.

The "reports frequently use extremely technical language – there is unfortunately no requirement for either the concerned company or the pollution control board or any other authority to simplify the content of the EIA [Environment Impact Assessment]” the Amnesty report said, adding that mandatory social impact assessments are “almost never” carried out.

"In recent years, successive central governments have sought to dilute requirements for public hearings for certain categories of mines, putting the rights of local communities at risk," the report further said.

The environment impact assessment report forms the basis for issuing environment clearances. However, the report said in most cases, these reports are written by consultants who are “chosen and paid” by the companies involved in the project. A former environment minister who spoke to the organisation said that the assessment is a “a bit of a joke”.

"I admit it publicly. In our system, the person who is putting up the project will be preparing the assessment report,” the minister added, according to the report.

Minimalist reponses

In Kusmunda, the Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board called a public hearing in August 2008 to discuss the expansion of the mine’s capacity from 10 to 15 million tons per annum. While the state environment board published a notice about this in the local newspaper and provided a copy to the district office, it didn’t help much because a third of the population is illiterate.

Moreover, Amnesty reported that concerns of the villagers who went to the hearing were dismissed with “minimalist” responses.

“[Villagers] reported that many of their concerns, including concerns about rehabilitation and resettlement and the impact of mining on agricultural land, had been dismissed by CECB [Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board] authorities as being irrelevant,” the Amnesty report said. “An official record of the meeting suggests that many of the issues raised appear to have been met with minimalist responses which did not address the concerns of local people.”

At another hearing in 2014 on the further expansion of the mine’s capacity, Amnesty representatives were present. They found that the presence of a “large number of security personnel” at the venue seemed to have “intimidated” the locals and prevented them from speaking up. Those who did speak articulated their concerns about the impact on air quality and groundwater levels. In the entire gathering only one person was in the favour of expansion, the report said – he was an employee of Coal India Limited.

Concerns ignored

However, in February, the Ministry of Environment and Forests gave the expansion a go-ahead while "perfunctorily" mentioning the concerns voiced at the meeting. The ministry did not respond to questions about the reasons behind its decision, the report said.

The report said that the laws around public hearings and full disclosures mandated to be made by the companies are often seen more as a “bureaucratic hurdle” to overcome than a genuine opportunity to address crucial concerns.

“Is granting one land title more important to me or is a transmission line that is a State Government project? a former Divisional Forest Officer from Latehar, Jharkhand told Amnesty International India. "For local rights, I cannot stop development."

The report concludes that Indian authorities and companies have together used the “complex mosaic of laws” to deny rights to communities over the resources they use and inhabit. Amnesty said authorities have “breached the domestic laws” as well as international obligations under human rights laws that protect the rights of the Adivasi communities.