All this led to a violent clash between the police and the villagers in November, 2012 which left at least 37 people injured-  10 villagers and 27 policemen.  The incident took place in Loba village at the break of dawn on 6 November, 2012. Different sources corroborated that the police had open fired, with evidence of three villagers having gunshot wounds, including a woman (3).

There is also the dimension of water conflicts at play here. There was judicial activism carried out which raised questions about the blockage of the natural flow of river Ajoy by dumping of overburden by the collieries on the river bed (4). There was a pollution cost charged due to the ‘indifferent attitude’ of the mining company, and then another petition was filed in 2013 since the cost was considered too low. The locals also claimed that the company was involved in illegal mining and the authorities were aware of it (5).    However, in September 2014, when the Supreme Court of India declared 214 out of the 218 coal blocks allocated to private sectors as illegal, this was one of them (6). This ruling temporarily suspended activities.

DVC later got the block back as part of a fresh allotment process of 42 blocks to central and state PSUs under the provisions of the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act and in April, 2017 the board of power utility Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) had approved an investment of Rs 1,094 crore in developing it (7). However, this time the officials are trying to work things out with the villagers, starting with consultations and surveys to know the real owners of the land and proceeding with caution (8).

It still remains to be seen whether the villagers will be satisfied by the new developments.  

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