How solar farms fuel land conflicts
About two years ago, when Chanesar Khan first heard that a company will build a new solar park spread over 989 hectares of land, which he and others in western India’s Nedan village had been using to grow food and to graze their animals, he boarded a bus to meet a lawyer in Jaisalmer district—80km away. Together, over the next couple of months, they organized fellow villagers and filed a petition in the Rajasthan High Court challenging the allotment of the land to the plant. Around the same time, one Barkat Khan, along with another set of villagers in Nedan, filed a similar petition in the court.
But in November 2019, the court dismissed both the cases, following which Chanesar and Barkat filed appeals in the same court. Then, on 8 September, the court heard Barkat’s appeal and ordered status quo on the land until a further hearing. All construction on the 1500 MW Fatehgarh Ultra Mega Solar Park being built by Adani Renewable Energy Parks Rajasthan—a joint venture of Adani Green Energy and the Rajasthan government—has come to a halt.
“My grandfather first began to use this land. Our entire family depended on this land,” says Chanesar Khan. His appeal is pending a hearing.
