The Odisha Legislative Assembly on Wednesday witnessed a ruckus over the state government’s decision about the transfer of tribal lands to non-tribals.

As the House witnessed repeated adjournments, Speaker Pramila Mallick called for an all-party meeting to break the stalemate. However, the meeting failed to reach a consensus and the House adjourned till Thursday.

As soon as the House commenced for the day, the Opposition Congress and BJP members rushed to the well of the House and demanded immediate withdrawal of the decision on the transfer of tribal lands to non-tribals and questioned what prompted the government to pass such a decision in the cabinet.

Congress MLA Suresh Chandra Routray said: “We will not tolerate the injustice being meted to the tribals. The government needs to initiate a proper discussion before implementing the bill of selling tribal lands to the non-tribals. The Odisha government must re-evaluate the bill regarding the transfer of tribal lands.”

Odisha cabinet on November 14 approved a proposal to amend laws allowing the scheduled tribe (ST) people to transfer their land to non-tribals in scheduled areas with written permission from the local sub-collector.

The state government had maintained: “A scheduled tribe person may, with the written permission of the sub-collector, make a gift or exchange his/her land for public purposes or obtain a loan securing a mortgage against land in a public financial institution for agriculture, construction of residential house, higher studies of children, self-employment, business or establishment of small industries or transfer the same favour to a person not belonging to the scheduled tribe for the above purpose.”

The state government had also said that if the sub-collector did not grant the permission, the person could appeal to the collector within six months, whose decision should be final.

However, two days later, the state government withheld the cabinet’s decision following an instruction from Naveen.