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Jan 03, 2026
Vladimir Adityanaath

Persecution Claims Abroad, Environmental Violations at Home: Kuki Groups Allege Minority Christian Persecution After NGT Halts Illegal Road Through Protected Forests

When environmental law finally caught up with an illegal road carved through protected forests in Manipur, the response from its patrons was not compliance — but diplomacy. Or, more precisely, performative minority diplomacy. A self-described Kuki Civil Society Organisation (CSO), The Kuki Alliance for Nampi Awakening Movement (KANAM) has written directly to the United States Embassy in New Delhi, urging foreign monitoring and intervention after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordered a halt to construction of the so-called German/Tiger Road on 23 December 2025. Letter to the US Embassy by KANAM What is being presented abroad as a humanitarian crisis is a clear case of illegal construction across protected forests and ecologically sensitive areas. This is not a development project gone wrong. It is a deliberate attempt to convert a legal violation into a religious grievance. KANAM’s letter to the US Ambassador is revealing for what it carefully avoids addressing. It does not contest the absence of statutory clearances. It does not deny that the road cuts through reserved and protected forest land. It does not challenge the jurisdiction, evidence, or factual findings of the National Green Tribunal. Instead, it reframes a judicial stop-work order as “Collective punishment”, “Governance by lethal indifference” and “An assault on a targeted Christian minority”, accusing an Indian judicial body of moral criminality before a foreign embassy without any supporting facts. The Inconvenient Facts KANAM Skips 1. The Road Is Illegal — Without Ambiguity The National Green Tribunal, relying on official records, stated unequivocally that a) the road was built without mandatory prior permissions. b) It traverses protected and ecologically sensitive forest areas. c) No statutory environmental clearance was obtained. The project followed a familiar pattern: build first, justify later, as though illegality could be laundered into legitimacy through post-facto outrage. The Chandel unit of Kuki Inpi, a CSO claiming to represent Kuki language speakers, has previously been cited for openly defying State Government directives by constructing an unauthorised bridge over the Manipur River near Molnom village in March 2024. The structure was being constructed in the immediate proximity of the security-sensitive zones of Serou and Sugnu. The Deputy Commissioner of Chandel district had explicitly warned that the bridge “could cause unrest and an adverse security situation” via official communication, directing all law-enforcement agencies to halt the illegal construction. Repeated illegal attempts to construct such infrastructure in a conflict-affected region are not a neutral civic act. Such unregulated infrastructure may facilitate unchecked movement and potentially enable armed elements to bypass state oversight. Deputy Commissioner orders a halt to the construction of the illegal infrastructure at Molnom 2. The illegal road is named after Terrorists The most damning detail, entirely absent from KANAM’s appeal, is the road’s naming. The so-called “Tiger Road” is named after T. Kipgen, alias Tiger, the Commander-in-Chief of the Kuki National Front–P Faction (KNF-P). Kipgen had publicly called for violence against the indigenous Meitei population, explicitly framing it as a “war against the non-believers of Jesus” during the inauguration ceremony of the so-called Tiger Road on 11th November 2024. He had also claimed that the deadly attacks against Manipuri civilians in the Leimakhong and Kangchup region were carried out under his command [1] [2]. 3. Why Meitei and Naga Groups Opposed the Illegal Construction Long Before the NGT Order Opposition to the Tiger Road pre-dated the Tribunal order, and it was grounded in three consistent objections raised by Meitei and Naga organisations. (a) Indigenous Land and Sovereignty The Foothills Naga Co-ordination Committee (FNCC), imposed an indefinite bandh in July, 2025, citing The road’s proposed path cuts through ancestral Naga lands without prior consent or consultation with the Naga inhabitants. The committee viewed construction activities as a “deliberate provocation” and a threat to the cultural and territorial rights of the Naga people. The new road would serve as a logistical spine for drugs and arms smuggling rackets with Kuki Terrorists under the highly controversial Suspension of Operations (SoO) Agreement acting as enforcers [3]. FNCC Press Communique, August 12th, 2025 3. Political Signalling Was Present from the Start According to COCOMI (Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity), Kimneo Haokip Hangshing, the Saikul MLA, attended the flagging-off ceremony of the road. A project inaugurated in the presence of an elected representative is not an act of desperation by an isolated community. It is an act undertaken with visible confidence that rules would not apply [4]. What This Episode Ultimately Reveals This episode lays bare a series of institutional failures that extend far beyond a single road project. Illegality was normalised. For months, construction continued in clear violation of environmental and regulatory norms without meaningful governmental intervention. Second, it was not the executive, but an apolitical organisation, that was compelled to approach the National Green Tribunal to stall the construction of infrastructure carrying not only serious environmental consequences but also significant regional security implications. That such intervention had to originate outside the state apparatus is itself an indictment of governance. Finally, the repeated absence of consequence when certain Kuki organisations previously sought international intervention in domestic matters has had a predictable effect. It has incentivised escalation, transforming foreign outreach from an exception into a calculated pressure tactic [5]. Taken together, these failures illustrate how sustained regulatory inaction and indulgence of extraterritorial signalling can encourage the belief that domestic law may be bypassed and sovereign processes supplanted when compliance proves inconvenient [5]. References https://e-pao.net/GP.asp?src=10..221224.dec24 https://x.com/VladAdiReturns/status/1869321096325140643?s=20 FNCC Press Communique on 12th August, 2025 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1370566555077543&id=100063726346556&set=a.456943263106548 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/manipur-ring-road-built-without-permission-and-named-after-militants-ngt-orders-to-stop-work-10050548?utm_source=chatgpt.com World Kuki-Zo Intellectual Council Letters to nations like Israel and Britain urging intervention

Jan 02, 2026
Dr Ryan Baidya

A Solar Shield for the Aravallis: Turning Protection into a Performance Contract

India can’t police the Aravallis to safety forever. It must redesign incentives so legality becomes the most profitable land-use outcome. The Aravallis are among the oldest mountain systems on Earth, running from the Delhi ridge through Haryana and Rajasthan into Gujarat, an ecological backbone for north-west India. Yet the range is steadily being eaten away by legal and illegal mining, encroachment, and the infrastructure that follows extraction—roads, ramps, pits, and dust. Periodic crackdowns make headlines, but they rarely change the underlying equilibrium: illegality remains profitable, enforcement remains episodic, and responsibility remains fragmented. The problem has also become legally and administratively brittle. When the very definition of what constitutes the Aravallis becomes contested, regulators struggle to act with clarity, and violators exploit grey zones. In late December 2025, the Supreme Court kept a controversial Aravallis-related direction “in abeyance” and moved toward fresh expert consideration, an important reminder that enforcement cannot rest only on interpretive battles over lines on a map. A durable strategy must do something harder than “crack down.” It must redesign incentives so that lawful actors occupy and defend vulnerable zones, while the public gains measurable ecological protection and local communities gain tangible benefits. That is the logic behind a proposal that may sound unconventional but is in fact deeply practical: deploy solar power—specifically dual-use agrivoltaics where appropriate—not as a standalone energy project, but as a protection instrument for the Aravallis’ degraded and mining-pressure landscapes. From policing to a protection economy Illegal mining is not simply a crime; it is a business model. It succeeds where (a) returns are high, (b) monitoring is low-frequency, (c) penalties are negotiable, and (d) authority is split across departments and jurisdictions. The standard response, raids, seizures, and short bursts of enforcement, does not fail because officials do not work. It fails because the system is designed to revert. What would it look like to create a competing business model, one that is lawful, investable, and financially committed to keeping mining out? The answer is to create Aravallis Solar Conservation & Livelihood Zones (ASCLZ): carefully mapped belts in low-lying, degraded, and high-pressure areas around the range (not core habitats) where solar is permitted only under a stringent conservation license. The license is not a subsidy. It is a contract that turns private capital into a deterrence and restoration machine. The core innovation: the Conservation Performance License At the heart of the model is a Conservation Performance License (CPL)—a time-bound land-use license whose commercial value depends on verified protection outcomes. The CPL’s design is what makes the concept credible: A large performance bond held in escrow, with automatic drawdown triggers if illegal mining is detected within the licensed boundary, if monitoring is tampered with, or if restoration obligations are repeatedly breached. Continuous MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, Verification) using satellite change detection, drone verification, and field inspections—structured as audit-grade evidence with a chain-of-custody. Drone surveillance and deterrence: making illegality stressful and unprofitable Illegal mining survives by staying mobile, exploiting low-frequency monitoring, and disappearing before enforcement arrives. ASCLZ should therefore add a continuous drone layer, integrated with zoning maps, GPS geo-fences, and day–night sensing, to create near-real-time visibility over mining-pressure belts. Drones cannot be bribed or intimidated, and they provide a persistent record of heavy equipment movement, unauthorised access routes, excavation scars, and stockpiles. Deterrence comes from certainty and speed. Each verified drone detection should automatically produce a time-stamped, geo-tagged evidence packet and trigger a predefined response cascade: immediate control-room alerts, dispatch of rapid-response teams, temporary site closure orders, and escalation under the CPL (including bond drawdown and penalty initiation where applicable). When operators know that entry into restricted zones is quickly detected, documented, and followed by unavoidable financial and legal consequences, with outcomes visible on the public dashboard, the incentive to return to the Aravallis collapses. A penalty ladder that escalates from cure periods to monetary penalties to suspension, termination, forfeiture, and blacklisting for severe events. Mandatory community benefit-sharing (a ring-fenced village fund, local employment and skilling commitments), audited and transparently disclosed. This architecture changes the incentive structure: the operator earns money only by protecting the land. If mining happens, the operator loses money quickly and risks losing the license. That is how one converts an “enforcement problem” into a “performance contract.” Why agrivoltaics strengthens legitimacy Solar infrastructure can become controversial when it is seen as land grabbing or commons enclosure. In the Aravallis context, where grazing, fodder, and seasonal use of commons are livelihood lifelines, this is not a minor issue. The program, therefore, needs a design default that reduces land-use conflict: agrivoltaics, or agri-PV, where the land continues to support grazing or compatible crops beneath and around raised panel structures. A growing body of India-focused work emphasises that agrivoltaics only works if standards are explicit: definitions, allowable land use, continuity requirements, and monitoring that prevents “dual-use” from quietly becoming solar-only by attrition. A credible Aravallis program should therefore adopt measurable rules (for example, minimum active agriculture/grazing continuity where agrivoltaic designation is used), plus annual audits combining remote sensing and field verification. The non-negotiable: zoning that protects core ecology This is not an argument for solar across the mountains. A serious Aravallis program must begin by drawing a hard line: core ecology is inviolate. No solar in protected forests, sensitive habitats, or critical wildlife corridors; no solar that fragments recharge zones. The proposal’s zoning model is simple: Core / Inviolate: no solar, no mining Buffer / Defensive ring: degraded foothills, abandoned quarry belts, mining-pressure edges—eligible for CPL Community livelihood belt: agrivoltaics-first designs with community agreements and continuity obligations This zoning discipline matters for two reasons: it protects nature, and it builds political durability. A program perceived as a disguised land diversion will not survive. Institutional design: one authority, one dashboard, one set of triggers Because the Aravallis cross state lines and departmental mandates, the model requires a dedicated delivery mechanism: an Aravalli Protection and Solar Authority (APSA)—statutory or an empowered inter-state entity—with clear authority over zoning notifications, tendering, monitoring, escrow/bond administration, and fund management. APSA’s legitimacy would rest on its transparency: public dashboards that show site boundaries, alerts, inspections, penalties, restoration progress, and audited fund flows. In a context where discretion enables rent-seeking, dashboards and audit trails are not cosmetic. They are anti-corruption infrastructure. Procurement design: reward protection, not just price No policy survives if procurement is flawed. If tenders reward only the highest premium or the lowest tariff, the outcome will be predictable: corner-cutting, symbolic restoration, and weak monitoring. India already runs tariff-based competitive bidding frameworks for renewables, with evolving guidelines and amendments. The Solar Shield model does not need to reinvent energy procurement. It needs to overlay conservation obligations through the CPL and award licenses using a quality-and-cost-based selection approach, such as a two-envelope evaluation with minimum technical thresholds. Recent reporting on tender governance underscores why bid design and timelines matter; rushed processes can distort outcomes and invite capture. A credible scoring rubric should heavily weight: conservation/MRV capability, restoration credibility, agrivoltaic continuity (where relevant), community benefit-sharing, and grievance systems—then price. In other words, the “best bidder” is the one most capable of delivering verified protection at scale, because failure here is not just commercial; it is ecological. A pragmatic pilot: prove the model, then scale This is not a proposal to blanket the Aravallis with panels. It is a proposal to target the belts where illegal mining is most persistent and most damaging. A serious pilot could include three site typologies across states: (i) abandoned quarry rehabilitation, (ii) degraded commons defensive ring, (iii) agrivoltaic livelihood belt. Within twelve months, the pilot should publish hard metrics: incidents detected, time-to-response, penalties triggered, restoration milestones met, community fund receipts, and audited spending. If the data shows a meaningful reduction in illegal mining pressure and credible livelihood gains, the program scales through cluster tenders. If it does not, the design is corrected before expansion. This is how we move from a persuasive idea to a disciplined public policy instrument. What citizens should demand If India is serious about saving the Aravallis, citizens must demand enforceable design, not slogans: No solar in core habitats—publish exclusion maps. Performance bonds with automatic penalties for illegal mining and encroachment. Public dashboards with audit trails—alerts, actions, penalties, restoration progress. Ring-fenced village benefit funds with transparent receipts and social audits. Independent annual audits tabled publicly. The Aravallis do not need one more cycle of outrage followed by erosion. They need a stable protection economy where legality is financially stronger than illegality, and where protection is monitored, priced, and enforced through contracts that cannot be bargained away.

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Persecution Claims Abroad, Environmental Violations at Home: Kuki Groups Allege Minority Christian Persecution After NGT Halts Illegal Road Through Protected Forests

A Solar Shield for the Aravallis: Turning Protection into a Performance Contract

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