Gram sabha approval required only for projects effecting quality of life of tribals, says PMO

The Prime Minister’s Office bid to dilute forest right rules for speedier approval to the projects is being resisted by the tribal affairs ministry, mandated to enforce the Forest Rights Act, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 21, 2013, 20:50:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Prime Minister’s Office bid to dilute forest right rules for speedier approval to the projects is being resisted by the tribal affairs ministry, mandated to enforce the Forest Rights Act.

The Prime Minister’s Office has asked the environment and tribal affairs ministries to seek mandatory consent of gram sabha - a body of all villagers – only if the designated project affects the quality of life of people living close to the project area.

The recommendation made by Pulak Chatterjee (principal advisor to Prime Minister), constituted to speed up project approvals, is similar to the provision that existed before the Forest Rights Act came into being from 2008.

It says that gram sabha’s consent is required only if the quality of life is affected from mining or submergence leading to huge displacement of people. “A slew of other industrial projects would get clearance without approval of locals,” a forest right activist said.

The Chatterjee committee also said that gram sabha’s consent would not be required for diversion of forestland if public hearing has been held to get environment clearance.

The environment clearance process precedes the process for forest clearance.

Holding public hearing is must for getting environment clearance and it cannot be construed as obtaining gram sabha consent.

However, for getting forest approval getting sabha consent is must under the environment ministry’s 2009 rules of the Forest Rights Act, reiterated in July 2012 by the tribal affairs ministry.

The PMO wants the environment ministry to first amend the 2009 circular and then tribal affairs to incorporate the relevant changes in the July 2012 circular.

The environment ministry is not adverse to the changes if the tribal affairs ministry agreed.

“We don’t administer the Forest Rights Act…It is for the tribal affairs ministry to make changes,” said a senior environment ministry official.

Tribal affairs ministry is, however, reluctant to change its rule.

“How can we make the rules in violation of the parent (Forest Rights) Act?” asked a senior tribal affairs ministry functionary. “Such a change would jeopardize rights of tribals and forest dwellers and they would continue to suffer”.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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