KOLKATA (miningweekly.cm) - The majority of indigenous communities in the eastern Indian province of Odisha have voted against a bauxite mine proposed by Vedanta Resources Plc.

Seven of the 12 gram sabhas (village communities) which voted in a Supreme Court-ordered referendum have rejected the Vedanta mining project, provincial government officials said on condition of anonymity, since the voting process was not complete and the verdict had to be officially placed before the courts.

Officials in the Odisha government said that Vedanta Resources had now decided to seek alternative bauxite reserves to feed its closed smelter, though no confirmation was available from the company.

The plan was for the estimated 150-million-tonne bauxite reserves of Niyamgiri, which was considered sacred by the indigenous people, to be exploited by Vedanta Aluminium Limited, an associate of resource major Vedanta Group, to produce three-million tonnes a year of raw materials for the company’s one-million-tonne-a-year refinery, shuttered since December, owing to a shortage of bauxite.

Under Supreme Court direction and for first time in Indian industry, the Odisha government has completed a voting process at seven villages across the Niyamgiri hills. The Court ordered that mining would be banned in the region if the majority of the indigenous people voted against it.

“The voting is not complete, but the verdict till now has been decisive. It is after a long struggle that the Dhongria Khonds have been able to assert their rights,” said S Sabor, a Niyamgiri Surakhsha Samiti (Niyamgiri Protection Committee) activist.

“After the verdict from the seven villages, we are confident that the communities' economic, social and cultural rights will not be violated by the mining project,” Sabor added.

According to him, the voting in the seven villages completed to date had unanimously rejected the mining project.

An official of the provincial government said that on completion of voting in five more villages, the verdict of all indigenous people across 12 villages would be submitted to the Forest and Environmental Ministry, which would take a final decision based on the verdict, under supervision of the Supreme Court, within the next two months.