This piece of the article is authored By:- Akshit Dwivedi (Author) and Sana Sanjeev (Co-author) are second-year law students at Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur.
Corporate land grabbing in India represents one of the most acute intersections of development policy and indigenous rights, where Adivasi (tribal) communities—constituting roughly 8.6 per cent of India’s population—face systematic dispossession from ancestral lands and forests to make way for mining, industrial, and infrastructure projects. Despite a constitutional and statutory framework that is among the most protective of indigenous land rights in the developing world, implementation gaps, legislative dilution, and the use of state force have combined to create conditions where corporate land acquisition routinely overrides tribal consent and community protections.
The Constitutional and Statutory Framework
India’s constitutional architecture recognises the vulnerability of tribal communities through specific protective provisions. The Fifth Schedule empowers Governors to regulate the transfer of land by or among members of Scheduled Tribes and to prohibit or restrict the transfer of land by such members, while the Sixth Schedule creates autonomous district and regional councils with legislative powers over land management in tribal areas of northeastern India. Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution guarantee equality, freedom, and the right to life and livelihood, which the Supreme Court has consistently interpreted to encompass protection of indigenous communities’ land-based livelihoods.
Three key statutes form the legislative backbone of tribal land protection:
- The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA): Section 4(d) mandates that the Gram Sabha shall safeguard and preserve the traditions and customs of Scheduled Tribes, while Section 4(i) requires Gram Sabha consultation before land acquisition in Scheduled Areas.[3][5]
- The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA): Section 3 recognises individual and community forest rights, including rights of self-cultivation, habitation, grazing, access to water bodies, and habitat rights for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). Section 6 vests the Gram Sabha as the authority to initiate and determine forest rights claims. Crucially, Section 4(5) prohibits eviction or removal of forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes until the recognition and verification of rights is complete.
- The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR Act): This replaced the colonial Land Acquisition Act, 1894, and mandates Social Impact Assessment, consultation with Gram Sabhas, and the consent of at least 70 per cent of affected families for private projects (80 per cent for public-private partnerships) before land can be acquired.
Landmark Case Law: Niyamgiri and Beyond
The most significant judicial articulation of indigenous consent rights in India came in Orissa Mining Corporation Ltd. v. Ministry of Environment & Forest, (2013) 6 SCC 476 (the Niyamgiri case). Vedanta Resources, through its subsidiary Sterlite Industries, sought to develop a 670-hectare bauxite mine on the Niyamgiri Hills in Odisha, the sacred homeland of the Dongria Kondh, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group. The Supreme Court, through a bench comprising Justices Aftab Alam, K.S. Radhakrishnan, and Ranjan Gogoi, held that the Gram Sabha must examine whether the proposed mining would affect the cultural, religious, and community rights of the tribal communities, reading Section 4(d) of PESA together with Section 6 of the FRA.
The court directed the Odisha government to place all issues before the Gram Sabhas of affected villages, with a High Court nominee as observer, and mandated a decision within three months. In August 2013, all twelve Gram Sabhas unanimously voted against the mining project, and the Ministry of Environment and Forests ratified the rejection in January 2014. This was effectively India’s first environmental referendum and a landmark recognition of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) within domestic law—a norm the FAO has since cited the Niyamgiri case as a textbook example of in its global FPIC practitioners’ manual.
Another significant precedent is the Supreme Court’s engagement with POSCO’s proposed steel plant in Jagatsinghpur, Odisha, where local communities resisted the acquisition of betelnut-growing agricultural land, and civil society groups invoked FRA provisions to challenge the adequacy of the consent process. In Samatha v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1997) 8 SCC 191, the Supreme Court had earlier held that the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals, including private companies, in Scheduled Areas is constitutionally prohibited, establishing a bedrock principle for subsequent land-grab disputes.
The Reality: Corporate Encroachment and State Violence
Despite this protective legal architecture, the gap between law and implementation remains vast. In Bastar, Chhattisgarh—one of India’s most mineral-rich and tribal-dominated regions—communities have faced escalating militarisation, displacement, and violence linked to corporate mining expansion. The ICCA Consortium documented in January 2025 that over 450 indigenous Adivasis had been killed since January 2024, with most being Gonds, Maria, Halba, and Muriya tribe members, in what civil society organisations describe as extrajudicial killings in the guise of counter-insurgency operations designed to clear land for mining corporations. Tata Steel, Essar Steel, and the National Mineral Development Corporation have all secured mining and industrial concessions in Bastar, while mineral revenue from Chhattisgarh reached ₹12,941 crore in 2022–23—with nearly half from Bastar’s Dantewada district—even as socio-economic indicators in the region remain among India’s lowest.
Amnesty International’s investigation of Coal India Limited’s operations in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Odisha found that the world’s largest coal producer systematically failed to ensure meaningful consultation with Adivasi communities on land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement, and environmental impacts, violating both the FRA and the LARR Act. In Assam, the proposed 500 MW Solar Park in Karbi Anglong District threatened to displace over 20,000 Karbi, Naga, and Adivasi families from 2,400 hectares of ancestral land, with consultations held in only 9 of 23 impacted villages, until the Asian Development Bank cancelled its $434 million loan in May 2025 following community resistance.
Legislative Dilution: The FCA 2023 Amendments
A critical recent development is the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023, which amended the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. Legal analysis indicates that the amendments have dismantled community consultation requirements, removed environmental protections, and weakened the requirement for Gram Sabha consent by enabling diversion of forest land for “national security” and “infrastructure development”—particularly in border areas—making community consultation a post-facto formality rather than a pre-condition. The Supreme Court is currently considering the constitutional validity of the FRA itself in Wildlife First v. Union of India, where conservation groups have challenged the Act’s community-rights framework, with potential implications for millions of forest-dwelling tribal families.
Strengthening indigenous land rights against corporate encroachment in India requires action on multiple fronts. The FRA’s Gram Sabha consent mechanism must be made non-derogable for all projects affecting tribal land, and the 2023 FCA amendments that dilute consent requirements should be revisited to restore the primacy of FPIC as established in the Niyamgiri precedent. The LARR Act’s consent provisions must be rigorously enforced, with independent monitoring of Social Impact Assessments and rehabilitation compliance. Corporate accountability should be strengthened through mandatory human rights due diligence requirements for companies operating in Scheduled Areas, with civil and criminal liability for directors who authorise land acquisition in violation of FRA and PESA. The criminalisation and killing of indigenous land defenders must be addressed through independent investigations, accountability for security forces, and protective legislation modelled on international standards. Finally, implementation data on FRA claims—including rejection rates, reasons, and appeals—should be transparently published to enable judicial and public scrutiny of whether the Act’s protective intent is being honoured in practice.The Indian experience demonstrates that the existence of progressive legislation is a necessary but insufficient condition for protecting indigenous land rights. Without robust enforcement, genuine Gram Sabha empowerment, corporate accountability, and the political will to prioritise tribal rights over extractive profits, the law remains a paper shield against corporate land grabs that continue to dispossess India’s most vulnerable communities.
Conclusion
Corporate land grabs against indigenous communities in India expose a fundamental tension between the constitutional promise of tribal protection and the developmental imperative of resource extraction. Despite a robust legal architecture—comprising the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, PESA, the FRA, and the LARR Act—and the Supreme Court’s landmark recognition of Gram Sabha consent rights in the Niyamgiri decision, implementation remains deeply deficient. The reality on the ground, from Bastar’s militarised mining corridors to Assam’s contested solar parks, reveals that corporate actors continue to acquire tribal land through inadequate consultation, coerced consent, and outright state violence, while legislative amendments like the FCA 2023 further erode community safeguards. Addressing this crisis requires elevating FPIC from a procedural formality to a substantive, non-derogable right; imposing mandatory human rights due diligence on corporations operating in Scheduled Areas; ensuring criminal accountability for land acquisition in violation of FRA and PESA; and protecting indigenous land defenders from criminalisation and violence. India’s Adivasi communities do not lack legal rights—they lack the institutional will and enforcement machinery to make those rights operational. Until that gap is bridged, corporate land grabs will remain not merely a policy failure but a systemic form of corporate crime against India’s most vulnerable citizens.