The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Union environment ministry has granted stage-1 preliminary forest clearance to the Parsa opencast coal mine, to be operated by a unit of billionaire Gautam Adani’s Adani Enterprises Limited, in the forested Surguja and Surajpur districts of Chhattisgarh.

The mine falls in one of the largest contiguous stretches of very dense forest in central India called Hasdeo Arand that spans 170,000 ha (hectares). Of this, 841.538 ha of biodiversity-rich forest land, about the size of 800 football fields, has been cleared for mining. Not only is it dense forest, Hasdeo Arand is an important elephant corridor and has a huge hydrological impact on the region. Tribals here are completely dependent on forest produce. The process of settling forest rights among the tribal population living here has not been completed. Hence I want to initiate this petition demanding the revokation of the clearance rights order by the FAC