Chintapalli (visag agency), Oct 3: In a nasty jolt to the government, tribals boycotted the public hearing on bauxite mining here on Friday. The police, which had besieged the area, had no clue that the tribals would stay away. The confused officials went ahead with the public hearing through there was no public. The AP Pollution Control Board (APPCB) intended to hold the public hearing on the environmental aspects of the proposed bauxite mining by the state-owned AP Mineral Development Corporation (APMDC) in four blocks of the Jerella reserve forests under the GK Veedhi Agency mandal. The bauxite would be supplied to Anrak Aluminum, a UAE-based firm which would set up its alumina refinery at Makavarapalem in Narsipatnam division. In a highly guarded affair, the officials of APMDC and APPCB started the public hearing amidst slogans from the tribals drawn from the surrounding villages. Tribals from the villages which would be affected by mining, which are 40 km from the hearing site, kept off as the police suspended passenger bus services to those villages. It is learnt that the villagers who were afraid of heavy deployment of armed police preferred to stay indoors. Some of them who came all the way on foot boycotted the hearing and shouted slogans against the mining.