Report seeks full compensation for victims of Kandhamal riots

The report was released by Miloon Kothari, former UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing

Centre for Sustainable Use of Social and Natural Resources (CSNR), Bhubaneswar, and Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN), Delhi, on Friday released a report on the compensation paid to the families that had suffered damage and loss of property during the anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal in 2007 and 2008.

The report noted that though the State government provided immediate relief, compensation for ‘damaged houses’ and death, it did not enumerate and provide compensation for the loss of property (other than housing) such as household articles, vital documents (like educational certificates, land records), agricultural equipment, utensils, clothes, agricultural and forest produce, livestock, poultry, and livelihood-related losses.

The government was not having a policy to assess and compensate such losses.

The report was released here by Miloon Kothari, former UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing.

The panel also consisted of Dhirendra Panda, Secretary, CSNR, Shivani Chaudhry, Associate Director, HLRN, and Prafulla Samantara and Nicholas Barla, human rights activists.

The findings of the impact assessment study revealed that the real costs and losses suffered by individuals and families who experienced destruction of their homes and property were immense. While extensive damage to property, both movable and immovable, had been reported, the State has only compensated families for loss of homes.

On the basis of the findings of this study, the report recommended to the State government to take immediate measures to adequately rehabilitate and resettle the victim-survivors of the Kandhamal violence.

The report further urged the government to ensure full reparation to those persons whose livelihoods were affected due to violence and strife.

The government should provide adequate financial assistance to those children whose education was affected because of destruction of books and educational material, unavailability of study material, loss of academic certificates, and inability to attend school during and after the violence, the report suggested.

It further said that the government should provide financial assistance to victim-survivors whose documents of land and property were destroyed and facilitate the process to obtain alternative documents.

The government should develop a new policy for victim-survivors of violence due to conflict, such as in the case of Kandhamal, and implement it immediately, the report said, while urging the government to prepare a long-term strategy to protect and promote secularism and non-casteism in Odisha.