‘Land mafia paying tribals for forest encroachment’

A startling fact — land mafia is paying to the tribals for grabbing land in name of forest rights — tells a different picture of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 1, 2011, 01:21:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A startling fact — land mafia is paying to the tribals for grabbing land in name of forest rights — tells a different picture of the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

Many such facts were highlighted in a survey conducted by the National Rainfed Area Authority, under the Planning Commission. The survey was done in 10 states on the lives and livelihood of tribal and forest dwellers in country.

The law was framed to undo the historic injustice to the poorest — the tribals — by providing them land for livelihood sustainability.

The results shared with senior forest officers from across, including Additional Director General Forest BS Kishwan and wildlife experts at a seminar this week, however, projected a picture of misuse of law.

"No cut off date for claims submissions is encouraging people to encroach more and more land in the hope of extension of the cut off date (13.12.2005)," said VK Bahuguna, a member with the authority in-charge of forests. The authority is mandated to improve irrigation and not welfare of tribals.

The survey found over 11,000 hectares of forestland has been encroached in Andhra Pradesh since the law was enforced.

"Encroachers are using women as arm shields, who are lodging false complaints of sexual harassment against government officials," Bahuguna said, while making a presentation on the survey done by an NGO Grameen Vikas Trust. It also said false cases under scheduled caste and scheduled tribe laws have been lodged against the officials.

Instances of land mafia paying for land grabbing were unearthed in Jalgaon in Maharashtra and Sonbhadra in UP.

The encroachers are coming from other states, the survey said, while giving example of Guthikoya Tribe in Chhattisgarh migrating to Andhra Pradesh to claim land. “Similar situation was observed in Koraput in Orissa where fresh encroachments have been blamed on tribals of Andhra Pradesh by locals,” he said.

Contradicting the NC Saxena report, which blamed the state governments for poor implementation of community rights, the authority's survey said most tribals were not interested in getting community rights.

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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