New Delhi: After protests by several organisations and criticism by experts, the Chhattisgarh government has withdrawn its earlier order making the forest department the nodal agency for the implementation of community forest resource rights (CFRR) under the Forest Rights Act 2006 (FRA). Amending its earlier notification, the state government on Monday assigned the responsibility to the forest department to coordinate the speedy implementation of CFRR.
The state government had, through a notification issued on May 28, changed the nodal agency for the implementation of CFRR from the Department of Tribal and Scheduled Caste Development to the Forest Department.
Terming it as “unconstitutional”, several local organisations working for Adivasis and forest rights experts had heavily criticised the changes. According to the Central law, only the ministry or the department of tribal affairs can be made the nodal agency. Responding to the criticism, the state government amended the notification on Monday. Experts, however, believe that even this notification is unnecessary and likely to work against the very letter and spirit of the Act, which was legislated after long years of struggle.
“What is urgently required is fixing responsibility of the forest department, and not giving yet another power to the department in the name of coordination,” said Satyam Shrivastava, a member of two committees constituted by Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) on habitat rights and community forest rights. Questioning the rationale behind the new notification, Shrivastava further explained that “the forest department already enjoys enough power under the law and there was no need for something like this. Moreover, there is no clarity as to why in the new notification, the department has been given the responsibility of coordination only for giving recognition to CFRR claims.”
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He further said that “given the history of the forest department, there is the possibility that in the name of ‘coordination’, the department may further try to control the forest rights of the people and deny land rights to Adivasis.” According to Shrivastava, if the forest department was asked to make sure that people’s long-pending claims are processed in a speedy and time-bound manner, that would have made more sense for recognising community rights under section 3(1)(2) of the FRA.
Speaking to The Wire, Shomona Khanna, a lawyer practicing in the Supreme Court and a former legal consultant for the Ministry of Tribal Affairs said that “the whole point of the FRA is to bring a certain degree of democratic decision making into the forest areas to restore the rights of the forest dwellers and also to give them the statutory and legal authority that is required for them to take whatever conservation and sustainable development decisions they require.”
According to her, this is very important to remember, because the forest department and the forest bureaucracy has been in control of the forests since 1860. “One has to look at anything in the FRA from that perspective. Whether we are taking that objective forward or are we taking it backward,” added Khanna.
She also said that at the various levels — from the gram sabha to the sub-division to the district – the forest department has enough say in the process already and has often not been performing its duties properly, while creating stumbling blocks. “Sometimes, they miss summons and don’t attend meetings,” said the former legal advisor of MoTA. “There have been cases where the district-level committee has recorded in its minutes that we have decided to issue this patta (land title) of a particular community right or even individual forest rights, and the district forest officer says that ‘I will not sign the patta’,” she added.
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Terming the new notification obstructive, Khanna further said that “the forest department, in spite of the role conceived for it under the FRA, has unfortunately refused to play that role and has instead played an obstructive role.” She believes that the CFRR is the most critical and core right of the FRA.
“In addition to all the coordination that is already there in the acts and rules, what is the need of a new one? At the end of the day, what does it effectively mean? That the forest department will get a veto. And why should they have that veto? That is not the objective of the FRA,” she argued.
“I don’t think that they (the General Administration Department) have the legal authority to issue a circular like this. As per the law, it has to be the tribal department. Even if the tribal department had issued it or had gone through a consultative process and then told the General Administrative Department that they don’t have any objection to them issuing it, the reality is that there is more than enough coordination already embedded in the act and rules, and mechanism provided in the FRA. I don’t see any reason for this additional provision, especially something that will go to the heart of the FRA, which is the CFRR,” added Khanna.
Meanwhile, Alok Shukla, convener of the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan (CBA), told The Wire, “It is a positive development that the state government has withdrawn its earlier notification and we welcome it. However, it is to be seen whether the real objective behind the new notification is to facilitate actual and speedy realisation of people’s rights or to exercise control.”
He further said that they would continue to monitor the functioning under the new notification and would not allow any tampering with the law and its implementation. Like Shrivastava, Shukla also maintained that the state government should ensure a speedy clearance of the CFRR claims. According to him, there are nearly 200 such claims pending across the state.