Post News Network
Jhumpura, Feb 5: In the name of doubling of railway tracks, extraction of soil from government and forest lands and felling of trees have been the order of the day in Nayagarh and Malda panchayats in Keonjhar district under the very nose of tehsil officials.
Even as the law doesn’t permit extraction of soil from land belonging to tribals, contractors of the project don’t hesitate to loot soil from their land using earth moving equipment, the villagers alleged.
Significantly, the tehsil and revenue officials are not aware of the development while over a thousand truckloads of soil have been taken away from villagers’ land, sources said.
Though such illegal activities have been taking place in 15 sites of the two panchayats, the matter came to light after villagers of Dhanurjayapur under Malda panchayat including Raya Patra, Kirtan Nayak, Madhusudan Nayak opposed it. The contractors have managed to get away with such plundering of natural resources by luring a handful of villagers with false promises, Dhiren Nayak and Janardan Nayak of the village said.
According to reports, the concerned railway contractors are in need of huge quantity of soil for laying down the tracks. But they are excavating murram in rural areas escaping the attention of the administration. This results in a huge loss to the state exchequer.
The law says permission from the tehsil is required in case of lifting of huge quantity of soil or murram from government land or land with record of rights. Besides, one needs to deposit royalty towards the soil lifted from the land. However, both these norms have been flagrantly violated by the contractors, sources said.
Apart from that, the ditches created by such illegal soil lifting are posing threat to the lives of villagers as well as wild animals. The contractors have also felled several valuable trees during the excavation, the residents alleged.
A local outfit fighting for the cause of the tribals lodged written complaints with the tehsil office on several occasions, but it yielded no result, members of the organisation Gura Nayak, Naduru Majhi and Shukura Majhi said.
Sasmita Majhi, in charge of Malda revenue circle said she has reported the matter to the tehsil office.
Tehsildar Shiv Tapo, when quizzed about the matter, said that royalty and penalty would be collected from those involved in the incident within two days after an assessment.
On the felling of valuable trees, Champua forest ranger Rampada Arabinda Mishra said action would be taken after an investigation.