This past month hasn’t augured well for proponents of disastrous mining ventures in the Indian state of Orissa. First, London-listed Vedanta Resources gets rebuffed by two leading UK safety watchdogs – just as a top company manager prepares flying to Britain to boast about the Lanjigarh alumina refinery. Then last week, Orissa Chief Minister Navain Patnaik withdrew from giving a public lecture at the University of Sussex, when learning that human rights organisations were also to attend. It’s no secret that Mr Patnaik has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Vedanta’s head honcho, Anil Agarwal, in attempting to bring the company’s “infamous” Nyamgiri mining project to fruition over the past dozen years.
See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=11722.
See also Naveen in rights row, cancels lecture in U.K., http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3453403.ece,
and Politics of Bauxite Mining: Odisha and Andhra Pradesh face uncertain future in mining, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-05-26/news/31860979_1_bauxite-mining-bauxite-deposits-coal-mines.