At least 5,000 trees were cut on June 26 and 27 in the villages of Mudagaon and Saraitola in Tamnar tehsil in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district as part of a massive tree felling operation to set up a coal mine in the Gare Palma Sector II coal block, activists on the ground told The Wire. https://www.thewire.in/environment/massive-tree-felling-adani-coal-mine-raigarh-chhattisgarh
14 villages will be affected directly by the project and around 2,584 hectares of land are to be acquired for it.
Of this, nearly 215 hectares is forest land that will be razed clean of trees and any other vegetation.
Local police illegally detained seven people for a day on June 26, sources on the ground told The Wire. They added that at least 2,000 police and security personnel were deployed on June 26 to oversee the tree felling;
The deforestation is ongoing even as residents have consistently held protests, and filed petitions against the project with linked cases being heard in both the Chhattisgarh high court and the National Green Tribunal (NGT), India’s apex green court.
27/06/2025