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| A woman from the Dongria Kondh tribe collects firewood |
In February, the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) took many by surprise when it opposed a mining project in Odisha's Niyamgiri hills in the Supreme Court solely on the ground of violation of tribals' religious rights. Extracting bauxite from the region would violate the fundamental right of a particularly vulnerable tribe, Dongria Kondh, which considers Niyamgiri as the abode of their deity Niyam Raja, MoEF said. Till then, MoEF had maintained violation of environmental laws as the reason for cancelling clearance of the project by Vedanta in 2010.
