In the first phase of its assembly elections on November 12, 2018, Chhattisgarh witnessed a 70% voter turnout in tribal areas
BUSINESS STANDARD– Deep in the forested heart of eastern-central India, at the clearing of the Hasdeo Arand forest, paddy farmer Nanasaheb Armo (58) sat atop a fallen sal tree trunk, his shoulders sinking, as he silently surveyed the destruction.
Thousands of trees were chopped and strewn across land larger than a football field. The silence was punctured only by the noisy beeping of a hydraulic mining shovel, at work in a nearby open-cast mine. Armo and his Gond tribal community knew this forest to be theirs for generations– and to which they were given official titles five years ago.|Chhattisgarh Polls
But their subsequent dispossession and anger is a story that explains how mineral-rich forest land in tribal areas is being taken back by the state of Chhattisgarh. With 31% of its population tribal–more than any other large Indian state–the (BS) unrest now threatens the re-election prospects for a three-term Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.
In the first phase of its assembly elections on November 12, 2018, Chhattisgarh witnessed a 70% voter turnout in tribal areas. If the second phase registers a similar higher-than-normal turnout on November 20, 2018, it could reflect the discontent over the slow progress of individual tribal land claims–more than half of which have been rejected–and the particular struggle for community claims in the mineral-rich north.
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