The arbitrary takeover of land is one of the country's biggest faultlines today. New legislation proposed by the government does little to fix this, says VIJAYAN MJ IN A recent interim order, the Supreme Court of India denied permission to British company Vedanta to mine the hills of Niyamgiri in Orissa. But that's only half the story, for the apex court went on to suggest that Vedanta make its Indian partner Sterlite apply for and obtain the clearance. In doing so, the court has gone against the report of its own Central Empowered Committee (CEC), and in effect has allowed the Niyamgiri hills to be mined till they run dry. The Dongria Kond tribals, the indigenous population of Niyamgiri, are baffled by the logic of events. They cannot understand how a group of people sitting in New Delhi can decide to sell their venerated Niyamgiri hills to a company without consulting them when they have been the inhabitants and protectors of the hills for ages. They have neither heard of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, based on which their lands are going to be appropriated from them, nor that in Delhi's corridors of power moves are on to further strengthen it. Still very much in force, the Act has managed to bring under its regime tribes that even the British could not. Its defining feature is the consistent loyalty it shows to the colonial principle of "Eminent Domain', meaning that the State is the super sovereign and the owner of everything