Date | March 24, 2015: The indigenous communities of a forest in central India have reason to celebrate this spring. No more will they have to live with the fear of being booted out their land that faced the threat of being swallowed by a giant coal mine.
The tribal residents of Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh can now look forward to gathering mahua fruits falling off trees and sell them to make a living. They stand vindicated, as Mahan will be not mined — for the time being.
After internal wrangling, the Ministry of Coal has given way to the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. The Mahan coal block will not be auctioned, it confirmed in response to a Right to Information request from Greenpeace.
This, in simple words, means that the sensitive Mahan forests, home to one of the oldest forest communities, will be kept off-limits to mining.
Mahan in Madhya Pradesh is one of the oldest and largest sal forests in Asia. Spread across 1,600 hectares, this dense forests is home to over 50,000 indigenous people (dwelling in 54 villages) and several endangered wildlife species.
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(Source: http://www.rtcc.org/)