Pulingpadar (Kalahandi, Odisha): “I was picking mahua flowers when I saw three bulldozers, three Haiwa [how villagers refer to commonly seen Huawei sand dumpers], and three Boleros storm into Kurkuti,” Budhbari Majhi, an Adivasi resident of Pulingpadar from the Korsik clan, said while recalling the early morning of March 18.By the time Budhbari Majhi could inform and gather the rest of her community, 10 acres of Kurkuti was already levelled.Kurkuti, a 42-acre patch of forest land roughly 1.5 km away from the nearest village of Pulingpadar, lies along the stretch of road from Bhawanipatna to Thuamul Rampur in the Kalahandi district of Odisha.While factions of Kutia Kondhs are classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) by the Indian state, this designation does not uniformly apply to all communities self-identifying as Kutia Kondh, including those in Pulingpadar.Kurkuti Mauja (revenue circle) is part of the larger forests on the outskirts of Karlapat Wildlife Sanctuary around Khandualmali hills that are life to villages in the Mauja like Amtaguda, Bejuguda, Khuan, Ranpur and Pulingpadar.On these hill slopes, communities practice podu – mix-cropping ragi with oil seeds, pulses like kandhul, and other millets. The forests of Kurkuti are also home to diverse tree species such as mahua, jaamun, imli, kataash, salap and khajur. On its uplands, around 60 families from Pulingpadar cultivate paddy, niger (oil seed), kandul (pulses) and kosla (little millet). Many also seasonally celebrate their mango and pineapple orchards, in what is referred to as the communities’ parab, a periodic tribal ritual offering newly harvested crops to ancestral deities followed by their communal sharing.Mahua seeds from Mahua trees of Kurkuti that form the primary source of income for families of the Kutia Kondh and Jharnia tribes of Pulingpadar. Photo: Malika SinghIn the first week of January 2026, a 12-feet-wide path from the main road to the 42-acre land was carved through a stretch of forest by bulldozers. Since then, Kurkuti has become a site of intense confrontation between the Kalahandi district administration, Kalahandi Police, and the Adivasi and Dalit people of Kurkuti Mauja.“It was only after I approached the tehsildar, Satya Sanatan Panigrahi, with some other village leaders that we all learnt about the repurposing of Kurkuti to a revenue colony for families of Tijmali who are to be displaced by Vedanta’s mining operations,” Kartik Majhi, an Adivasi resident of Pulingpadar from the Korsik clan actively involved in anti-mining people’s movements, shared.Vedanta Limited, a mining giant headquartered in London, secured a mining lease in February 2023 as the Government of Odisha’s preferred bidder for extracting nine million tonnes per annum (MPTA) of bauxite from the bauxite-dense plateau of Tijmali (recognised as Sijimali in government records). The lease period is set at 30 years for over 1,549 hectares, of which 708 hectares is forest land. The plateau of Tijmali, and the two villages that fall under the mining lease area, Tijmali and Malipadar, are about 35 km from the base of Khandualmali, where Kurkuti sits.Vedanta estimates that 140 Adivasi households across the villages of Malipadar and Tijmali are to be displaced as a result of its bauxite mining operations. An official circular by the Kalahandi district administration and the Government of Odisha on February 2, 2026 mandates that those displaced families are to be resettled in Kurkuti – thus explaining the bulldozer operations on the land.“The land belongs to the Government of Odisha, and so they are entitled to transfer its ownership to Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO), which is the entity responsible for the resettlement project,” Sushant Gordia, a Field Operations Officer from Mythri, a sub-contractor company of Vedanta Limited, claimed. “Certainly, if the villagers attack these operations, police presence will follow,” he told The Wire.While Kurkuti’s Record of Rights clarify ownership under the state’s government, its transfership to IDCO is dated as recently as March 10, 2026.According to official guidelines issued by the Revenue and Disaster Management Department of Odisha in 2017, as well as the Forest Rights Act, 2006, any settlement in, and conversion of, forest lands into revenue villages is recognised entirely as a right of Adivasi and other forest-dwelling communities.This means that while areas like Kurkuti Mauja can be formally recorded as revenue villages without altering their legal status as forest land, existing land use and community dependence ought to be recognised. Only after a Gram Sabha with community members as mandated under The Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA), can such resettlement be approved.Since Pulingpadar and surrounding villages fall within a Fifth Schedule area, the Gram Sabha is the primary authority over land acquisition, displacement, rehabilitation and the use of natural resources. Under both the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and PESA, it is this body, not the state alone, that holds decision-making power over such land.This Gram Sabha for converting Kurkuti into a revenue colony never happened, nor was a notice issued prior to the bulldozer operations. Every protesting villager spoken to in Pulingpadar testified to these facts.Given this absence of appraisal about repurposing Kurkuti, and persisting presence of bulldozers despite recurring resistance, villagers from the Mauja have been camping in Thauguda, land only 15 metres away from Kurkuti, through chilly nights, the afternoon sun and stormy rains.Kondh women from Pulingpadar and Ranpur stay sitting through the afternoon of March 23, some looking at bulldozers and observing police personnel movement from afar. Their blankets, jackets and bags stay hung onto trees next to Kurkuti as they prepare for another chilly night ahead of them. Photo: Malika SinghKondh men in the day waiting to serve each other from their makeshift community kitchen at the camp site. Photo: Malika SinghMeanwhile, alongside District Police Kalahandi and local magistrate vehicles, a CRPF bus with over 15 personnel has established a routine presence from 10 AM to 5 PM each day, followed by night duties starting around 8 PM until dawn.“On the first day of our dharna, we lit a fire to get through the night. The police killed it. We had set up a big tent, they took it out,” Biswajit Majhi, a young Adivasi resident of Pulingpadar from the Korsik clan, said. “They don’t come and talk to us, or explain why they need to be here if the company is supposed to be in-charge, they just stand with their platoons all day,” he added, flagging police intimidation as an emerging norm.Villagers light a fire together at night, debrief about their day and get ready to sleep another night protecting their forest land. Photo: Malika Singh“The villagers are protesting unnecessarily even though everything is happening legally, and they are armed, so the police deployment I have ordered is for law and order prevention,” Nagaraj Devarakonda, Superintendent of Police, Kalahandi claims, in addition to denying any presence of paramilitary on-site. “They pelted our vehicles with stones, and so we needed to establish our presence in case the matter escalates,” he continued. When asked about the number of personnel, vehicles and resources deployed, the matter was addressed as “internal”, and no further answers provided.Said “arms” refer to indigenous hunting weapons such as taangya, taangi, bhala or barcha, that the Kondh and Jharnia Adivasis routinely carry while moving through their forests. None have been employed as means of violence against any state entities present in or around Kurkuti, villagers claim.Ever since the police have established a presence, the women officers on night-duty have been staying in the Eklavya Model Residential school in the closeby village of Dabriguda, where their food is also prepared by local villagers.CRPF personnel and paramilitary on the afternoon of March 23 sitting adjacent to the levelled bit of Kurkuti. Photo: Malika Singh[From left to right] A bulldozer, four local magistrate and Kalahandi Police Boleros, a CRPF bus, and another Police Bolero across from Thuaguda where the villagers have set up their camp. Photo: Malika Singh“Every afternoon a drone flies above us, hovers for a few minutes, gets closer, goes farther, and then leaves,” Biswajit continued as he attempts to describe the growing atmosphere of surveillance that has come to define everyday life around Kurkuti.A drone caught flying over the camp in Thauguda at around 2:10 PM on March 23. Photo: Malika SinghOn March 23, the day of this field report, local Adivasi leaders, along with Lingraj Azad, a long-time defender of Dalit and Adivasi rights from the Samajwadi Jan Parishad, and Suresh Patnaik, another Adivasi rights activist, took turns to address all those gathered.After another day of waiting for the Kalahandi district collector, Sachin Pawar, to conduct a public hearing with regards to evolving circumstances, mounting frustration pushed this community dialogue.“The amount of land we get to call ours is reducing without our knowledge, while the family count is increasing, so this fight is for the survival of future Adivasi generations, to get to call their forests their home,” Suresh asserted. “Those in power who are protecting the corporate giants, repressing us using state entities and resources, are supposed to be on the people’s side, but their public conduct as we can see is the opposite.”The community reflected on the absence of political accountability, answers to their questions about the omission of a Gram Sabha, and militarisation of Thuagada as a response to their dissent. The Wire has reached out to the district collector over both phone and email for a response on these issues, and this article will be updated when a response is received.Suresh Patnaik, a long-time grassroots Adivasi rights activist in Odisha, addresses the community. Photo: Malika Singh“In our absence, the company officials commence their operations on our land. They stop when we resist. Are we expected to stay here in the open for all time so we can preserve our rights to this land? Who is going to pound our paddy? Graze our land? Who is going to go for wage labour?” Kunni Majhi asked, as the community experiences a sharp hindrance to their daily routines amid these protests.Kunni Majhi, a local Adivasi voice of resistance from Ranpur village, addresses her community in Kui, backdropped with blankets and jackets hung on tree branches. Photo: Malika SinghOn March 24, after Lingraj Azad and Suresh Patnaik decided to head back to Bhawanipatna, they received a phone call from Kartik Majhi informing them that Bolero vehicles were following them. “We couldn’t see the vehicle right behind us for a while, but soon after Kartik’s phone call two bikes and two Boleros emerged behind us. We began speeding, and so did they,” Suresh told The Wire.“We had to turn sharply into the forests alongside the stretch of road, but it was dense, thorny and uneven, so we tripped over multiple times and I sprained my ankle,” he continued.At 12:10 PM on March 25, the following day, Lingraj Azad was arrested from his home in Bhawanipatna by the Bhawanipatna Town Police. Subsequently, two hours later, Suresh Patnaik was also picked up from his residence by the same police. Both were then taken to Thuamul Rampur JMFC Court from where they were remanded to judicial custody for a case filed in the Karlaput Police Station last year.On November 16, 2025, Lingraj Azad along with over 200 villagers of Thuamul Rampur block had gathered together for the annual Birsa Munda Jayanti, a Tribal Pride Day remembering the birth of, and indigenous resistance led by, Adivasi leader Birsa Munda. For the same, both Patnaik as well as Azad are charged with a veritable menu of charges including, but not limited to, attempt to murder, dacoity, unlawful assembly and rioting with arms. They are now lodged in Bhawanipatna District Jail, with their first bail appeal having been rejected, and a Session Court hearing in Kalahandi to follow.Two leading voices of Adivasi and Dalit resistance getting arrested at a time of heightened mobilisation by communities for their rights over Kurkuti points to a criminalisation of dissent and therefore a protection of Vedanta’s mammoth corporate pursuit, locals believe.“If Kurkuti is lost to this residential colony, the land will turn barren, and we will lose all sources of our nutrition as well as income. We will lose it all,” Kartik Majhi reiterated.More palpable than the tangible and immediate loss of income, however, is the loss of the indigenous notions of belonging and sacredness, and the sovereignty the Kutiya Kondhs and Jharnias have long cherished over their seeds, forests, lands, hills, sacred burial grounds and groves within those hills, and perennial streams.Malika Singh is an independent field reporter and a remote MA student at SOAS University of London, currently based out of Jaipur.