Bhubaneswar, July 15: The stage has been set for holding gram sabhas in the Niyamgiri hills to decide the fate of a much-debated mining project with the area’s Kondh tribals filing their claims under the Forest Rights Act.

Sources said over 150 individual and community claims have been received from the tribal residents of the 12 villages where the state government had decided to organise these meetings in tune with a Supreme Court judgment of April 18. Seven of these villages are located in Rayagada district while the other five are in Kalahandi.

The claims will be vetted by the Forest Rights Committees before being placed before the gram sabhas which get under way from July 18. The exercise of holding these village meetings in the two districts has to be completed by August 19.

The Rayagada and Kalahandi district administrations have also stepped up the pace of their awareness campaign on the gram sabhas that would take a final call on whether mining of bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills should be allowed or not. Mining in the hills is crucial to the survival of Vedanta group’s one million tonne bauxite-starved alumina refinery at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district.

The Niyamagiri mines were to be jointly worked by the Odisha Mining Corporation and a Vedanta group subsidiary. However, stage II forest clearance to the project was rejected by the Union ministry of environment and forests in August, 2010 following which the state government moved the apex court.

The court, in its April 18 verdict, made it clear that mining in the hills, which the local Kondhs worship as their deity, could not be allowed by trampling upon the religious and cultural rights of the tribals. It asked for the organisation of gram sabhas under the supervision of judicial officers of the rank of district judge to seek the opinion of Niyamgiri tribals on the issue.

Though preparations for the gram sabhas are in their final phase, the state government’s decision to organise these meetings in only 12 of the about 112 villages in the Niyamgiri area has triggered a controversy. While the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, an organisation fighting for the rights of local tribal people, has protested against the move and threatened to organize parallel gram sabha meetings, the Union ministry of tribal affairs also appears miffed with the state government for having taken a unilateral decision in this matter.