Despite threat posed to their lives due to possible strike of cyclone Dana, a section of residents in a vulnerable pocket of Odisha’s Kendrapara district refused to be evacuated from their houses on the ground that the government has ignored their forest right act claim in conferring them the land record of rights.

We are ready to die. For over five decades, we have been living in forest areas after advancing sea gobbled up our houses in Satabhaya gram panchayat in 1971. Since then we have been living in Charigharia forest areas. The forest department has issued notices to evict us. Later the revenue authorities assured us to rehabilitate us under Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 with grant of land rights. But we were left upset as we are yet to be rehabilitated under forest rights act, lamented Parikhita Mandal (82), a native of Charigharia village.

The revenue authorities asked us to move to the safety of cyclone shelter. But we have paid heed to their appeal. Bereft of right over the land inhabited by us for more than a half-a-century, we are leading an ignominious life. It’s better to die, the octogenarian added.

Charigharia is the lone village that has been existing within the Bhitarkanika national park boundary. About 4 families had settled down in the said forest areas in the aftermath of the 1971 cyclone. Cyclone had flattened their houses. Subsequently, there was steady human influx into the Charigharia forest block with the number of resident families swelling to 90, said an official.

“I visited Charigharia village on Wednesday and Thursday and requested them to leave their village and to stay in the cyclone shelter only two kilometers from Charigharia .I also told them this is not the proper time for them to raise their grievance. But they did not relent”, Prasana Parida, Sarapanch of Satabhaya Gram Panchayat said.

The protest of this nature is not desirable in this hour of crisis as the Government is intent on saving every life and to maintain zero-mortality. The nodal officer in charge of evacuation at Rajnagar has been asked to shift all the villagers of Charigharia to cyclone shelters immediately. If required, the administration will resort to forced evacuation, said Nishant Mishra, the Block Development Officer (BDO), Rajnagar.