Adani Pench Power Limited, a subsidiary of Adani Power Limited, is setting up a 1,320-megawatt supercritical thermal power plant in Chhindwara district. The construction of the plant will affect 31 villages and submerge over 5,607 hectares of land, including the full submergence of six villages.

Affected farmers are opposing the project on two grounds: one, they are against the plant as it will affect several villages and second, the diversion of land, it had acquired by the state government from farmers in 1986, for the project without their consultation.

The state government decided to provide the land and infrastructure for the project. In 1986, the Madhya Pradesh Electricity Board acquired land from five villages—Chaunsara, Hiverkhedi, Dhanora, Tekathawadi and Dagabani Piparia—at the rate of Rs 1,500-10,000 per acre for 750 acres. However, the farmers still had possession of the land until 2010, when Adani came into the picture.

In 2010, the state sold the land to Adani for "Rs 13.75 lakh per acre without conducting a public hearing", says Advocate Aradhana Bhargava, a social worker fighting for farmers' rights. The farmers are protesting against the government's move and have demanded that their land should be returned to them.

In 2011, over 3,000 farmers marched to the Parliament house in Delhi against the acquisition and sale of their land by the government to Adani. In November 2012, as part of police clampdown to suppress the protest against water diversion for the Pench Power Plant, Medha Patkar and 21 activists were arrested by police in Chhindwara. In 2016, another rally was conducted to demand the formal return of the land, although the people still had physical possession of the land.

In February 2013, community representatives and activists such as Medha Patkar along with Advocate Aradhana Bhargava filed a case against the project in the NGT. The NGT admitted the application despite objections to it by the Adani Power Limited, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and the State of Madhya Pradesh that cited that the section 16 of the NGT Act requires that the complaint should be filed within 90 days of the attainment of environmental clearance (EC) by a project. However, the NGT was told by the appellants that the required information to file an objection was not provided to them until January 2013 when they filed an RTI.

Between 2010-2017, the company had only managed to construct a boundary wall around the site and in its biannual compliance reports submitted to the Environment Ministry kept repeating the same reason for the delay that, ‘financial closure is yet to be achieved and thermal power plant construction work is yet to start.’ The company’s 2012 environmental approval was due to expire in late 2017. However, an amendment issued by the Environment Ministry in April 2015 extended the validity of all existing approvals by two years.

However, in 2018, the Madhya Pradesh Power Management Company Ltd invited EOI from interested parties who have sufficient land 'for setting up 1320 MW Thermal Power Project with major clearances but are unable to set up the power project on their land and are interested to transfer their land, clearances, SPV, etc. for development of the Power Project through tariff-based competitive bidding.' The criteria for expressions of interest exactly matched the situation of Adani’s Pench project. On 25 January 2019, MPPMCL floated another tender, to select two independent consultants to determine the value of assets of the Pench project site at Chhindwara. This appeared to signal that the government wanted to buy back the land that it had sold to the Adani Group nine years previously.

In 2019, Adani Power acquired entire stakes in Adani Pench power project, changing its name to Adani Pench Power Plant. The company is now seeking an extension of the environmental clearance (EC) to the project. The earlier EC expired in 2019.

When LCW contacted Rajkumar Sinha from the National Alliance of People's Movement on 4 August 2020, he said that on 27 May 2020, the state government had signed a 1,320-megawatt power purchase contract with Adani Power to supply electricity from the Adani Pench Power Plant. At least 28 organisations have publicly opposed the move in a press note questioning the need to purchase electricity when the state already has excess electricity.

Meanwhile, Adani Power has built a gate around the land although the construction ie yet to start.

In May 2021, the farmers put forward the demands for jobs after the completion of the power plant as per the agreed terms or permission to cultivate the vacant agricultural fields around the plant. To settle the disagreement, the administration conducted two meetings between Adani officials and farmers. But the meetings were inconclusive. 

Subsequently, in June, the farmers planted Kharif crops in over 200 acres of land, reported a local newspaper. In response, the Adani officials filed a complaint with the block tehsildar accusing the farmers of encroaching the land. The tehsildar issued notices to over 50 farmers. However, the farmers refused to answer the notices and claimed that they had already warned Adani officials during previous meetings.