"Why protestors are walking 700 km across Rajasthan to protect sacred groves from solar projects", 3 Feb 2026

These groves, or orans, are crucial community lands. Marchers say their allocation to renewable energy companies can destroy local economies and ecologies.

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..a group of around 70 people stood in front of the Tanot Mata temple in Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer district, roughly 30 km away from the India-Pakistan border. After praying at the temple, the group began to beat drums and set off on a long march along the roads of the Thar desert. As they marched, they raised the slogan, “Oran bachao, gochar bacho!” – save orans and gochars, referring to community groves and grazing lands that they see as sacred. The same day, the Rajasthan government allocated 745 hectares of land to solar power companies in Jaisalmer’s Ramgarh tehsil. While locals do not yet know the exact piece of land that has been allocated, they fear that such a large tract will likely be land that has been classified in government records as wasteland, but that in fact is part of an oran, and is used by villages around it. The marchers were walking in protest of exactly such practices. Over the last few years, they said, the Rajasthan government had allocated thousands of acres of orans land in the state to renewable energy plants. These allocated lands also included ponds and other water bodies managed and protected by local communities, they noted. This is particularly significant given that Rajasthan is India’s leading state in solar power, with an installed capacity of more than 22,000 MW. At least seven more projects that will use around 41,000 hectares of land are currently under construction in the state. Conflicts and legal cases over these allocations are not new. The village Nedan, for instance, filed a case in 2018 to block a 600-MW hybrid solar-wind project that was being set up in its vicinity by the Adani group, arguing that it restricted access to orans that they used. In 2021, the Rajasthan High Court cancelled the allotment of land to the group.

..The marchers have walked through several villages surrounded by fields of solar panels that sprawl over thousands of hectares. Among the companies that operate in this region are ReNew, which has a 300-MW plant in Sanwata, Adani Green, which has a 360-MW project in Nedan, and MW Hild Energy a 334-MW Hild Energy plant in Bhopa.