London, July 27 - The Church of England and other shareholders of the mining company Vedanta braced for major protests at their annual meeting here Monday with a young Kondh tribal joining celebrities to demand an end to mining plans on the bauxite-rich mountains of Nyamgiri in Orissa.

As major shareholders, who also include local councils in Britain, gathered for the Annual General Meeting, the movement against Vedanta operations in Nyamgiri gathered the celebrity support of human rights campaigners Bianca Jagger and Arundhati Roy.

Owned by Indian-origin billionaire Anil Aggarwal, Vedanta's plans to build an open-pit mine for bauxite threaten the ecologically sensitive mountain, which is a sacred site for the Kondhs, said Sitaram, a representative of the tribe, who travelled all the way from Nyamgiri.

'We cannot live without our god mountain and the forest and we will continue our peaceful struggle. It is a life and death battle and Kondh people are united on this,' said Sitaram, whose travel was sponsored by ActionAid, a campaigning nongovernment body.

Jagger and Roy also lent their voices to the mounting protests against Vedanta Resources plc, which is a member of the FTSE 100 group of leading companies in the London Stock Exchange.

'I will be appealing to investors, which include the [British] government's own staff pension fund, the Church of England and borough councils such as Middlesbrough to stop Vedanta going ahead with a mine that will damage the cultural and economic rights of the Kondh people as well as the fight against climate change,' Jagger said.

Vedanta, the core of whose assets lies in India, was not immediately available for comment but the group has previously argued that the project will bring vital jobs and economic development to the region.