A group of 63 retired forest officers from across the country has addressed letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers and secretaries of Environment and Forests and Tribal Affairs, expressing “extreme concern” about the irreversible damage being done to forests in the name of Forest Rights Act-2006.
Since 2008, when States started implementing the Act, fresh encroachments by unscrupulous elements increased under the garb of the Act, which stipulated that the claimants cannot be evicted or removed till the process of forest rights recognition is complete, the letter said.
For political dividends, the regularisation of encroachments was promised especially before elections to local bodies and State assemblies, mentioned the letter signed by IFS officers, including P. K. Jha and R. Sobha, who headed the Telangana Forest department post bifurcation.
A letter by a former Forest department head from Telangana said how ministers, MPs, MLAs and different political parties were publicly promising grant of titles to post-2005 encroachments, which resulted in attacks on forest officials.
In recent years, gram sabha meetings are conducted repeatedly mainly to give titles to ineligible claimants and regularise encroachments made after the cut-off-date as per the Act, the letter alleged.
For recognising forest rights and for grant of title of forest rights on forest land as per the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006, the claimant must establish his credentials and possession of the forest land concerned as on the cut-off-date of December 13, 2005.
“...after 16 years of the Act, in some States, ineligible claims extending over lakhs of acres of forest lands are being admitted in violation of FRA and FCA 1980, and primarily on the strength of evidence of village elders while discarding satellite imageries and other public documents...” the letter said, in obvious reference to the podu land patta distribution that has been initiated by the Telangana government.
Referring to the community rights mentioned in the Act, it has been alleged that ineligible communities have been granted rights without specifying the extent or nature of such rights. The uncontrolled extraction under such grant is jeopardising the sustainability of forest resources, the letter pointed out.
It cited the State of Forest Report 2021 and said there is a loss of 10,594 square kilometres of bamboo bearing area across the country between 2019 and 2021 due to such grant of community rights. Additionally, the management rights are being granted even inside tiger reserve areas in States such as Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
The letter placed a request for appropriate instructions to all concerned to ensure that the Act is implemented strictly, and illegally granted rights are cancelled. Forest rights should be vested only in the communities mentioned by the Act.
