 Hello and welcome to the news clip. Today we have with us Soda Bhardwaj, who is the national secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, as well as a visiting professor at National Law University. For the past many years, Soda has been working in the state of Chhattisgarh for the rights of workers, Adivasis and other marginalized sections of society. But recently, Annabh Goswami on his show on the public TV claimed that Soda is an urban naxal and he got evidence of this fact on the basis of content of a letter. Soda, the first question is, what is your response to these allegations? I have immediately issued a statement. Needless to say, I have absolutely nothing to do with that letter. And it is a totally fabricated and actually defamatory and dangerous letter because it has been, you know, the effort is to try to show that I am, you know, in contact with some Maoist leader and I am asking for funds and have some connection with Kashmiri separatists. And it's also named a lot of other lawyers who, some of them are, you know, very excellent human rights lawyers, some of them I don't know at all. So everybody is going to be painted with that stigma. And I have immediately refuted it. And, you know, I still, after all those days, after the, it was, I think, telecast on the 4th of July, today is the 13th. And so far, no security agency has, you know, contacted me regarding this letter. So, I mean, how, where did that letter surface? What is its source? How has it come about? And why was it, you know, you know, bandied about in that manner with my photograph and, you know, all of which are available on YouTube, mostly photographs, images from my public lectures, et cetera. So I was totally shocked by it. I mean, I have also issued a legal notice to the Republic TV and the people in charge. So this has come recently after five people were arrested, again on similar charges, Mahesh Rao, Shoma Singh, all of these people. And they were also arrested on the basis of the contents of a letter. Again, there was a letter also, which was discovered after their arrest. So why do you think you are also being clubbed along with these people? What is it about your work which has put you under this category? You see, for one, one of the persons who was arrested was Surendra Gadli. He is a Dalit lawyer with about 30 years of experience in Nagpur. He is a very popular lawyer there. In fact, after Surendra Gadli's arrest, there was a lot of protests, a lot of demonstrations by the Nagpur district bar and they even passed a resolution against his arrest. So he is a very popular person. And he has been taking up very difficult cases, whether of Adivasi and the trials, whether of Dalits, even in the Keralaanji and Ramabai eviction cases and all those. And he and I belong to an Indian association of people's lawyers. He is the general secretary and I am a vice president. So in fact, immediately after the arrest, I held a press conference in the press club of India in New Delhi. And a number of lawyers also who were very concerned with this attack on lawyers also addressed the press conference along with me. So that could be an immediate cause of maybe irritation or nuisance which I have caused. The other thing which I am a little more concerned about is that the IAPL had actually carried out a fact finding in the month of May into the situation of lawyers in Kashmir. They had been invited by Kashmiri lawyers because Kashmiri lawyers are facing a lot of difficulty in terms of restrictions on the way they have to conduct their profession, the difficulties that they are having in taking up human rights cases. There also some of them are being kept in detention, etc., etc. So a whole team had gone. Unfortunately I was not able to go with the team. But considerable data has come out about the situation of lawyers and we were definitely planning to come out with the report. So maybe this was also a move to delegitimize our identity in anticipation of anything that we might have wished to say about the situation in Kashmir. And also probably a work in Buster and those areas have been... Actually I have been in PUCL since about 2006-07 and I have been a general secretary now for about 10 years of the Chhattisgarh unit. So I have been taking up many cases. The PUCL has been taking up many cases and we have been doing it as a civil liberties organization. We have been going to the NHRC, we have been going to the courts, to the High Court, fake encounter cases, sexual violence cases, etc. In fact recently the NHRC had asked for my help in investigating into a case of killing of 8 people and burning down of hamlets, etc. And I had actually organized the fact finding for the NHRC and we came out and gave them the reports. So this human rights work which we are doing is very much in the public domain. It is a different matter that definitely it must be an irritant for the Chhattisgarh government. And apart from that, I have also in my capacity as a lawyer being taking up many cases on land acquisition, on tribal rights, ISA, forest rights, etc. There is a very, very critical situation in Chhattisgarh at the moment. So that could be another reason and considering that Chhattisgarh elections are coming up and defaming me would be convenient to also defame the organizations associated with me. Whether it is PUCL or my own trade union Chhattisgarh Mukti Murcha or whether it is this broad platform of anti-displacement movement Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan which I am associated with. So that could again be a reason why super exclusive attentions have been focused on me. Can you tell us how these land acquisition cases are fueling the conflict in the state? Yeah, actually that is a very serious... Especially with this Nagar-Nar case also and the privatization that has been proposed. Exactly, exactly. Actually in that respect both in North Chhattisgarh and in South Chhattisgarh many of the times when we talk about Chhattisgarh we focus on Bastar but actually if you see the situation in North Chhattisgarh where there is no Naxal problem as such. But there you find for example in Raigarh, in Korba, in Korya, in Sarguja there is an enormous crisis because of mining which is going on in these areas. Raigarh has been I think mined through and through and the environmental devastation. I remember a collector of Raigarh had in fact Suomoto said that there are some 100 odd cases that he had Suomoto found where lands of Adivasis are being used by mining companies in very fraudulent kind of land transactions. So fraudulent land transactions and then of course a mining which is absolutely environmentally devastating this has become very common in those areas. In Jashpur for example the elephants who have been driven out from the mining areas are now beginning to attack people. So now there is this elephant when conflict is well that is also happening. Particularly you know one area Hansdev Aran which used to be called a Nogo area it was supposed to be very very rich biodiversity this is in North Chhattisgarh. There again Adani mining has more or less taken over. So the situation is very serious and people are actually tired of trying to assert their rights the forest rights you know under the Forest Rights Act some possibly only half of the individual claims have been settled so far and community claims very very few very very few and now the government is in fact even taking back the patas individual patas and community forest rights patas in favor of mining. So people are very unhappy about these things maybe that is the reason why also you know the Patilgadi thing happening in many of these resources states. And if privatization happens of this project of this Nagarnad project then those things would I guess become even more difficult. Nagarnad is a project in South in the Bashtar area yes privatization there the expansion of the Bela Deela mine has been resisted then Rao Ghat which is just the project is just beginning but already some 22 camps of B.S.F. etc have been set up and villages there are again saying that there has been hardly any compliance with PISA or with Forest Rights. We personally have done cases in the High Court and which has now also come to the Supreme Court because we have not given a interim relief so we have come to the Supreme Court regarding community forest rights of many many villages which have not till now been granted and those areas are all being earmarked for various parts of the project of the Rao Ghat project. So this is yes I mean going to be a huge bone of contention and the rest of the area of Bashtar of course many of it much of it is under conducting leases and mining leases which because of the conflict it is not possible for the government to actually mine there but some thousands of acres thousands of hectares of land is actually already recorded under such leases. So that is a very serious and as you said I mean it could also be because we are taking up cases like this that we are being targeted. And extra judicial killings are also very common in the state. So on the one hand you have states repression in this form and the other you have state officials saying that it is the work of activists like you which poses a threat to national security and integrity and all that what do you feel about that? Well actually I feel and the standard PUCL has continuously been taking that if you want to de-escalate violence in Bashtar then the first thing that we need to do is to actually implement you know the laws passed by parliament properly which means the PISA act which means the forest rights act it means giving powers to the Gram Sabha it means listening to people when they are having objections and you know that would be the way in which you could also you know show people that you know otherwise the alienation from state is always complete in these areas because the feeling is that nobody is listening to them at all and you know in fact I think it was the collector Alex Paul Menon yes who had been abducted who had once made a statement in fact he should have noticed for it as well that when he was being guarded there were many young people guarding him and he said that you know why are you in this movement and so on and they said well this was all during that Salva Judoong period when you know people were being forced either you come to the camp you know or we'll treat you as outlaws and in fact that is the period when more and more people actually ran away to the forest so this situation of polarization is something that we are trying to address trying to say that give people rights that is the only way to you know restore any kind of faith in them so the state has mostly the only result it has taken is by means of repression exactly but what do you what can we do when this this set of Maoists is brought up and that is the reason which is given for taking this path well exactly I mean the in fact nobody really talks about the mining and other things which really are the push behind all of this because till the 80s Maoists were already there but I mean it was only in 2005-06 when you had Salva Judoong and you had MOUs with Tata and SR and all these mining leases and prospecting leases being given out that you actually thought it necessary to you know do something do an operation like Salva Judoong which of course even today the government insist was you know spontaneous and all that but it was very clearly a state sponsored operation and the whole idea was you know to drain the water and kill the fish which is a very typical military strategy scotch scotch or policy or something like that but actually the 644 villages which were evacuated which had some 3 lakh population it's only 50,000 of them that you managed to bring to the camps and even if you say 1 lakh migrated you know to Andhra or whatever it still meant that 2 lakh people went into the jungles so actually if anything it is this state intervention in the state repression which has actually made people you know think that that is the only way that they can save their lands and you know their forests and their livelihood that really needs to be addressed I mean running away from it is not going to help and oppressing it further is only going to make it worse yes it's only going to make it worse now these are of course unpopular opinions to hold so I expect that is the reason for being targeted also so last question Soda is what really what prompted you to take up this work in the first place I think you were 18 when you gave up your US passport and you went to work in the forests of Chhattisgarh what made you do that? yeah well actually I am primarily a trade unionist so in 1986 I joined the trade union of Shankar Gauhan Yogi I was there in Dali Rajara then the Bilai movement started it was a big movement of contract workers I'm still with that movement my primary organization and basically it is the trade union which made me a lawyer because I had to fight so many cases I mean basically we were anyway had to work for those cases so my comrades in the union said that you know why don't you become a lawyer so I actually became a lawyer at the age of 14 and then what I realized was that basically all movements have the same problem because they really don't have committed lawyers they can't afford you know the people who need you most can afford to pay you lease when it comes to lawyers so and you know you have to on the other side are all the corporate lawyers so you have to be as competent as them as you know well-versed and everything but at the same time there are no fees forthcoming so basically it's only the people who really and the other interesting thing is that if you want to work with movements you also have to learn and listen a lot to what people are saying I could manage to you know win a few cases in contract labor only because I was so close to the workers that even though they didn't have officially any scrap of paper as evidence for years and years of work but that allowed me also to other kinds of evidence so basically I'm a trade unionist and but injustice everywhere is a threat to justice everywhere they say and Yogi's union particularly has been one which has also considered that well-being of all people in Chhattisgarh is something that that union wants to fight for so that is how I became a lawyer we had a group of lawyers in Belaspur who also basically support all kinds of you know it's like group legal aid kind of thing so we are trying to support all people's movements as far as we can and during that I also got involved in PUCL and so on and so forth so yeah so these are the kind of things that we do and I will continue to do them irrespective of Mr. Goswami the need for such for people like you is particularly strong right now yes and I'm sure you know the sort of malign me it is not going to stop other people from doing carrying on the similar kind of work or the necessity of people to carry on this kind of work so thank you Sudha for talking to us today thank you for watching this talk