‘Today I only see denuded land’: Mango orchards give way to Adani’s power plant

In Bihar’s Bhagalpur district, a 2,400 MW thermal power plant is rising on land whose true costs are only beginning to surface. Awarded to Adani Power Ltd in a Rs 30,000 crore deal, the Pirpainti project has moved forward through disputed compensation, broken promises, and a public hearing farmers say was engineered to silence them. The two-part series traces what has been erased in the process. 

The first part examines how hundreds of farmers across 12 villages have watched their orchards vanish without adequate compensation for either land or their orchards. The second turns to a community left out of the process entirely: two Santhal and Pahariya Adivasi hamlets sitting within the project site itself, absent from official lists of affected communities — left with no guaranteed right to compensation or rehabilitation. 

Adani Power rejected any suggestion of legal or regulatory violations, saying the Pirpainti project is fully compliant and that it supports local communities and jobs.

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On the morning of February 19, Sushil Kumar walked out of a meeting with government officials believing his land and trees would remain safe for 15 days. 

The 49-year-old was among a group of farmers in Bihar’s Bhagalpur who had gathered for a high-level meeting, attended by officials of district administration, the police and the state’s Energy Department. They wanted permission from the farmers to cut 100 trees to build a road to a 2400 MW thermal power plant being built by Adani Power.

The meeting went on from 11:30 am to 12:45 pm at the end of which a clear agreement was reached: no work would take place on the disputed land for the next 15 days.

The farmers, who had to rush for another hearing, for which they were served notices on the same morning, left with some relief. The notices were served under Section 126 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which permits an executive magistrate to take preventive action to maintain public order. It wanted them to appear before the official and furnish a bond of Rs 1 lakh each.

While they were occupied with the hearing, the promise given to them in the morning was broken, allegedly by district administration officials who arrived at the site along with a contractor.

“They brought a JCB machine, illegally felled seven mature trees, and stole the timber,” Sushil wrote in a police complaint he filed afterward.

Sushil’s land lies in Pirpainti block, on the southern banks of Ganga River and barely 30 kilometres from the 2340 MW Kahalgaon Super Thermal Power Station. His land is now on the site of a second, larger power project – a 2,400 MW ultra-supercritical thermal plant, backed by a Rs 30,000 crore investment, awarded to Adani Power Ltd (APL), on the land allotted by the Bihar State Power Generation Company Limited (BSPGCL).

Barely 70 km away, an APL subsidiary also runs a 1600 MW coal-powered plant in Godda district of Jharkhand. It supplies power to Bangladesh.

At the centre of the conflict around the Pirpainti plant is the heartburn over inadequate compensation for the farmland acquired by the state, its failure to acknowledge the massive tree loss, a public hearing that excluded dissenting farmers, and an NGT-ordered probe report riddled with errors and omissions. 

The farmers and residents are also wary of the ecological consequences of having to live in a landscape dotted with coal-based plants.

For generations, this stretch of Bhagalpur has grown some of Bihar’s most valuable mango varieties: Jardalu, Malda, Bombaiya, Gulabkhas, produce that farmers here have built their livelihoods on. Mango orchards across the region, including the 12 villages affected by the project, are the region’s ecological lung and economic backbone.

Yet, after the acquisition began, the compensation offered, based on two frameworks, became a bone of contention. The sheer number of trees and what the farmers stand to lose in terms of livelihood is sharply disputed by the state. 

A complaint filed before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) put the number of mango trees threatened by the project alone at five lakh. Government reports, which count trees of all species rather than mango trees specifically, tell a starkly different story: just 19,388 trees counted in the project area, of which 15,691 are cleared for felling and 3,697 for transplantation. 

The farmers say the mango trees on their farmland have not been included in the compensation. As per the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR), 2013, the trees are to be compensated after adding their value to the market value of the land – a provision farmers say was not adequately invoked in their case.

‘Today, I only see denuded land’

Standing across the road from the high-security iron gates of the rising plant, 80-year-old Keshav Prasad Gosawami looked out over the barren, leveled dirt where a dense tree cover once stood. He shook his head, mourning a loss that no amount of compensation could ever truly replace.

“Kewal hara bhara ped hi hamare chat ke upar se dikhta tha. Aaj kewal jameen dikh raha hai,” he said. (Earlier, I could only see lush green trees from my roof; today, I only see denuded land.)

Sushil Kumar’s joint family had owned 12.5 acres, including an orchard of 500 mango trees. Separately from the seven trees felled on February 19, Sushil says 100 of his family’s mango trees have been lost so far as construction has proceeded, and he fears the rest of the orchard will follow with, allegedly, inadequate compensation given for nearly six acres.

Sushil said his family expected about Rs 4 crore (for the six acres that have been acquired) but received only Rs 1.2 crore.

Brijbhusan, one of the 988 farmers whose lands were taken away, said he received Rs 2.75 crore for six acres of his land, but the full compensation remains unpaid. The 65-year-old farmer said he also lost 151 mango trees.

After the incident on February 19, 2026, Sushil filed an online FIR, requesting the police to stop the destruction scheduled to resume the next morning at 6 am. But he received no response. 

On March 4, 2026, Sushil wrote to the Superintendent of Police, Bhagalpur, complaining about the failure of the Pirpainti Police to contact him or act on his complaints regarding the encroachment of his uncompensated land. “The suspicion is that trees are being cut to make a road for Shri Gautam Adani bypassing all laws,” Sushil wrote, attaching documents. 

Yet, the police, allegedly, refused to intervene.

Sushil’s family was already embroiled in a legal battle over the land they held since 1946. Trouble brewed after a 1971 revisional survey erroneously recorded it as government property, prompting an eviction threat in 2007. In March 2018, the Additional District and Sessions Court of Bhagalpur ruled that the State of Bihar could not justify the 1971 entry, declared it illegal and confirmed the family’s absolute title and possession over the land. 

Recently district authorities cancelled the jamabandi (an official land record detailing the history of ownership, cultivation, and rights) of Sushil’s family. “We are now contesting this in court,” he said.

First conceived in 2006 as a hydropower project under the state-run National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), the Pirpainti project went through two failed proposals over the next two decades – a 2014 MoU with NHPC that lapsed, and a subsequent solar power plant with the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) that also didn’t materialise. Land acquisition began during this period but stalled amid local resistance and disputes over compensation.

The project was revived in February 2024 as a thermal power plant and the Adani Power Limited was declared the winning bidder in August 2025. The letter of award granted to Adani Power on August 28, 2025, states that it was being handed over about 1200 acres of land including 1020 acres already held by the BSPGCL and a further 81 acres of railway land and 100 acres of Bihar government land that the BSPGCL would acquire. 

This land area, totalling about 1200 acres (486 hectares), was given to Adani Power on a 25-year lease to build, own and operate the plant, at a rental rate of Re 1 per acre per year, according to the letter of award. The Environment Clearance (EC) for the project's first phase was granted by the environment ministry’s Expert Appraisal Committee for thermal plants in April 2026. This document, however, cites a different land area: 479 hectares. Construction had allegedly begun even before this first-phase EC was granted, in gross violation of the rules.

On August 29, Adani Power filed an application for a second EC for the project’s second phase, in which the plant will be expanded to 4800 MW with three additional 800 MW units, requiring 55 more hectares (approximately 136 acres) of land. Infrastructure such as the coal-handling and washing facility, the ash pond, and staff housing, built under phase one, will be shared across both phases, which is why the second phase’s land requirement is far smaller than the first.

A public hearing or Jan Sunwai was held on January 29, 2026, before construction began, one that farmers say was engineered to keep dissenting voices out (see ‘A managed public hearing’ below). A boundary wall, road, and a helipad have since come up in the fenced project site; the boundary wall was built by the Bhagalpur district administration, and the road by APL.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) later ordered a committee to investigate allegations that construction had begun without clearance (see ‘At the NGT’ below). The EC was granted while that process was still underway.

At the NGT

The issues around the project go beyond individual land titles. 

Acting on a petition filed by Sharvan Singh, 40, who heads the Kisan Chetna Uthan Samiti – an organisation of farmers whose land was acquired for the project – the NGT’s Eastern Zone Bench in Kolkata passed an order on March 24, 2026 taking up allegations that tree felling and construction had begun at the site without environmental clearance. 

Finding insufficient evidence at that stage to establish what had actually happened on the ground, the tribunal constituted a Joint Committee – comprising officials of the State Pollution Control Board, the Bhagalpur District Magistrate, and the MoEF&CC – to inspect the site and report back within a month, listing the matter for further hearing on May 14, 2026.

Singh’s petition said two other thermal power plants (NTPC’s Kahalgaon plant in Bhagalpur district and Adani Power’s Godda plant in neighbouring Jharkhand) are located in the region. The Kahalgaon plant stands within 30 kilometres of the project, yet no cumulative impact assessment has been done about the impact of building a third coal-fired plant in the same region. 

It further said “the plant is being built in an area comprising fertile agricultural land, orchards, dense tree cover and forms part of the Ganga basin… and approximately 5-10 lakh fruit-bearing trees including approximately 5 lakh mango trees aged about 25-30 years, supported by long-standing agro-ecological system exist there. This region is seen as a ‘Green Zone’. Destruction of this system will irreversibly destabilise the floodplain, leading to chronic flooding, erosion, groundwater depletion and agricultural collapse in the district.”

The Joint Committee missed its deadline. On May 14, the Bihar State Pollution Control Board sought six more weeks to file its report. The bench noted that the original application “prima facie” raised “substantial questions relating to the environment,” and issued notice to the respondents, including the state of Bihar and Adani Power.

The report finally came on July 20 but Sharvan Singh said the committee never sought statements or evidence from his organisation or other project-affected persons. At a hearing on July 24, the NGT took the report on record and gave respondents until the next hearing, on September 1, to file their replies.

The committee’s report reveals a series of discrepancies, errors, and omissions.

Factual errors and ignored concerns

The NGT committee report elides the complainants’ concerns, noting that they couldn’t meet the complainant Sharvan Singh because it didn’t have his contact number.

On the core allegation that construction began without proper clearances, the report points to an Environment Clearance dated April 15, 2026, and to letters from the Bhagalpur Forest Department permitting tree felling in October and December 2025. But work on such project sites can legally begin only after the EC is granted. It is silent on the specific allegation that felling and construction began before it came through.

The deliberations of the EAC about the project proposal, annexed in the report, contain a factual error. 

As per the minutes of the meeting held on March 19 and 20, available on the PARIVESH portal, “no court cases and show cause notices related to Environment are pending against the proposed project.” 

Sharvan Singh’s NGT case was filed on January 6 and registered the same month, with two hearings held on February 5 and 19 before the EAC met on March 19-20. The EAC’s claim of no pending court cases was therefore inaccurate because Singh’s case had already been filed and heard twice by the time it made that statement.

The report also ignores the concerns about the cumulative environmental impact of two thermal power projects - Kahalgaon and Pirpainti - being located in each other’s vicinity, in the Bhagalpur district. 

The committee’s report claims that the issue has been addressed in the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) study and the Environment Management Plan (EMP) prepared for the project before obtaining environmental clearance. However, the EIA-EMP report makes no mention of a second thermal power project being located nearby and conducts no cumulative impact assessment.

Despite these gaps, errors and omissions, the committee’s report concludes that the relevant permissions have been obtained for work done at the project site and the “averments made in the application [by Sharvan Singh] are not true.”

How many trees will really be cut down?

Affected farmers and local villagers assert that the destruction is so vast it is impossible to count the exact number of unaccounted trees that were felled as the orchards were spread across hundreds of acres.

At the project site, authorities denied entry but a peek through a gap in the boundary wall confirmed the scale of devastation. Mowed down by earthmovers, the lush green orchards were a thing of the past.

The number of trees to be cut down has varied from document to document in official records. Each successive official count, however, has been lower than the last.

One of the first documents that records the number of trees is a pre-bid reply uploaded to the Bihar State Power Generation Company Limited’s (BSPGCL) website. While this document is undated, its metadata notes that the file was created on June 17, 2025, about a month before the auction for the contract was conducted on July 16. 

This pre-bid reply includes a question raised by a prospective (un-named) bidder which sought the scope of tree-cutting and other land conversion work while pointing to the presence of more than 3,00,000 trees (covering ~400 acres) within the plot area.

A few months later, in September, Bhagalpur district magistrate Dr Naval Kishore Chaudhary cited another figure in comments to Dainik Bhaskar, saying an “official survey” conducted in 2010 found 61,363 trees, including 15,000 mango and 44,000 bamboo.

However, the NGT committee’s report, citing a letter written to Adani Power in October 2025 by the Bhagalpur forest department, cites an even lower figure, saying that there are only 19,388 trees in the project area, of which 15,691 have been cut down with permission, and the remainder relocated. 

These strike a sharp contrast to Sharvan Singh’s NGT petition, which places the number at 5-10 lakh fruit-bearing trees, including around 5 lakh mango trees. We could not independently verify the exact number of trees affected by the project.

A managed public hearing

The Jan Sunwai or the public hearing for the project, a mandatory step in the process of applying for an environmental clearance, was held on January 29, 2026. The administration painted it as a successful event in which the project-affected people’s support was established and their grievances and suggestions noted.

According to Sharvan Singh, the local administration ensured that critical voices were physically barred from the public hearing. He was also among the people detained by the police on the day. All of them received notices under section 126 of the BNSS, which mandated a court appearance and the execution of a Rs 1 lakh bond. 

The administration claimed there was an “apprehension of breach of peace” and ordered the key dissenting farmers to appear in court on January 29, 2026, at 10:30 am. 

Deepak Kumar Singh, head of the Harinkhol Gram Panchayat, one of the panchayats directly affected by the project, said the hearing was “pre-scripted to send a message that there was no protest, no opposition to the upcoming project”.  

“I am the elected Mukhiya but I was not allowed to participate in Jan Sunwai,” said Deepak, who was served a summons from Pirpainti police and a court summons the evening before the hearing. When he arrived at the station on the morning of January 29, he was detained, which kept him away from the Jan Sunwai. 

The police took him and six others to the SDM’s court in the afternoon. At the hearing, the SDM ordered the farmers to execute a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh each, along with sureties, just to guarantee they would “maintain peace” for a year, Deepak said. Instead of genuine project-affected farmers, the hall had Jeevika Didis and supporters of Gram Panchayat mukhiyas, who were in favour of the project.

An official of the block development office in Pirpainti, on condition of anonymity, confirmed the allegation. He said that many farmers who took part in the hearing were unaffected by the project and panchayat heads from distant villages were invited to take part in the meeting.

Arvind Sah, head of Manikpur gram panchayat, located about 5 km away from the Adani project site, was one of them. Arvind, who was invited by the local administration, said the Jan Sunwai was peaceful and that the local residents supported the project. He knew nothing about affected farmers being detained ahead of the hearing.

Sangeeta Devi, a Jeevika Didi, said she and her colleagues were instructed by their supervisors to attend the Jan Sunwai. “We have no choice and have to follow official instructions to attend government functions.” 

Erased livelihoods

The rules governing land acquisition under the LARR Act, 2013 state that the government must pay four times the prevailing market rate in rural areas. 

Agricultural land in Pirpainti block, where the CPI(ML) team met project-affected farmers, sells for around Rs 40,000 per dismil (or Rs 40 lakh an acre), a fact finding report by the CPI(ML) had found in September 2025. In comparison, the Bihar government’s circle rates, which are the minimum rate determined by the government for registration of land sales irrespective of actual market rates, are lower. As of August 2026, the circle rates the government has notified for agricultural land in the five panchayats adjacent to the project site range from Rs 7.5 lakh per acre to Rs 20 lakh per acre for double-cropped land and Rs 5.5 lakh per acre to Rs 15 lakh per acre for single-cropped land.

Those are recent figures, not the rate used for the acquisition itself. Farmers say the district administration notified a market value of Rs 19 lakh per acre for the acquired land. The figure appears in an August 2026 verdict of the Patna High Court, in which both the farmer, Sheikh Kalim, and the district land acquisition officer used it as the per-acre value of his land, which was notified for acquisition in September 2011. The court adopted it in its own calculation of the additional compensation he is owed. Farmers argue they are entitled to four times this market value under the Act.

The project’s land was acquired in two rounds, once in 2010–11 and again in 2013, Bhagalpur district magistrate Naval Kishore Chaudhary told Dainik Bhaskar in 2025. “Pre-2013 acquisitions followed the 1894 Act, while later ones were compensated under the LARR Act, leading to differences,” he said.

However, an affidavit filed by the BSPGCL, recorded in the Patna High Court’s verdict in Kalim’s case, admits that “100 percent compensation was not paid to some of the raiyats [farmers].” The court order also notes that in his case, while the land acquisition was notified in 2011, the district administration declared the compensation award due to him in 2015. Under Section 24 of the LARR Act, when land acquisition was notified under the old law but the compensation award had not yet been declared by the time the new Act came into force, the new law’s terms apply – which may explain why neither Kalim nor the state disputed that his compensation should be calculated under LARR, rather than the 1894 Act.

Several other farmers whose cases are in court also claim, like Kalim, that they have not been paid full compensation. If the High Court accepts their claims, its reasoning in Kalim’s case may also apply to how their compensation is calculated.

Compensation for land has also been paid at widely differing rates.

Sharvan Singh said that around 700 of the 988 farmers received some amount of compensation, ranging from 120-180% of market rates. That falls well short of the four-times-market-rate compensation LARR mandates. He cites an example of three brothers with adjacent, equally sized half-acre plots who received very different compensation rates. Showing documents, Sharvan said the first brother, Naresh Rai, got about Rs 27 lakh, while the second, Paras Rai, received around Rs 62 lakh. The third, Nand Lal Rai, got nearly Rs 72 lakh.

However, the farmers believe they are entitled to additional compensation, even if the original acquisition was under the earlier Act. “We gave our land to the government in the name of NTPC to set up a power plant more than 10 years back in 2013, but it was handed over to Adani. This is a bad joke on us,” remarked Rajesh Tiwari, a resident of Topra village. 

The 2013 Act specifies that once land is acquired for a public purpose the government can hold it for five years, and must return the land to its original owners if the project for it was acquired has not yet commenced. The Act also specifies that if the land is transferred for a different purpose, then the original owners must be given a share in the appreciated value of the land, though this provision has not been tested in their case.

Mohammad Mozahid, 60, former head of Mahesram village, and member of Pirpainti Nagar Panchayat, once owned 5.7 acres of land and a mango orchard with 100 trees. It used to fetch him an annual income of Rs 4 lakh. “All mango trees have been cut down, our livelihood is finished now,” said Mohammad.

Farmers whose land was acquired without eligible compensation are not being allowed to enter through the gate, he said. “Isn’t it against the law of the land?” asks Mohammad.

The loss of revenue from trees is real and corroborated by traders who buy produce from the area, who typically pay for a season’s harvest rather than the value of the tree itself.

Mohammad Shagir, a mango trader, said he paid Rs 18 lakh to lease four big mango orchards from three farmers this summer. “We pay according to the size of the orchard and number of mango trees. If there are more than 100 mango trees, we pay around Rs 2.5 lakh to 3 lakh for the season.” Another mango trader Munna Mian said he paid Rs 4 lakh for a large mango orchard (more than 100 trees) and Rs 2 lakh for a medium size orchard.

Under the Land Acquisition Act, these fruit bearing trees are supposed to be valued and compensated as assets on the land. The farmers claim that they have not been compensated for the trees.

The resentment of residents is compounded because the employment opportunities they were expecting have not materialised, even though Adani Power’s representative had told the public hearing that “once the project is implemented numerous direct and indirect employment opportunities will be created, and local people given priority based on their qualifications.”

Neeraj Prajapati, a local video camera operator, said local youths are keen to work but are not getting good jobs. Ramnath Paswan, a resident, said he had been trying for a supervisor’s job since March but is yet to get a call.

Mohammad Azhar, a resident who works as a crane and lift operator, said out of 400 workers only around 150 are from the area. ”Contractors are mostly outsiders, managers, supervisors, drivers and engineers are also mostly outsiders.”

Newslaundry reached out to the Bhagalpur district authorities, the Union Environment Ministry and Adani Power for comment on all the allegations in this report.

An Adani Power spokesperson said: “Adani Power unequivocally rejects any suggestion that it has acted in violation of applicable laws or regulatory requirements in relation to the Pirpainti project. The company is fully compliant with all applicable statutory provisions, approvals, and regulatory processes governing the development of the project. All project-related activities are carried out in accordance with the permissions, clearances, and directions issued by the relevant authorities.”

The spokesperson added: “Matters relating to environmental approvals and compliance are subject to a robust regulatory framework, which Adani Power remains committed to adhering to in both letter and spirit. The company is equally committed to working constructively with local communities and stakeholders. Adani Power continues to engage with local residents, support livelihood enhancement initiatives, create employment opportunities, and contribute to social development through targeted community programmes. The Pirpainti project is expected to play an important role in strengthening regional power availability, supporting economic growth, and generating employment opportunities in Bihar. Adani Power remains committed to developing the project in a responsible, transparent, and sustainable manner while fully complying with all applicable legal and regulatory obligations.”

This article will be updated if the Bhagalpur district authorities or the Union Environment Ministry respond.

All photos courtesy Mohd Imran Khan.

This is the first installment of Newslaundry’s Project Vande Mataram series.

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