Gadkari, Javadekar support Maharashtra govt in opposing tribal affairs ministry

Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar and transport minister Nitin Gadkari have opposed a directive from the tribal affairs ministry to keep rules diluting the Forest Rights Act in abeyance.

Updated on: Sep 12, 2014, 13:56:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may be heading for a high-pitched battle in Maharashtra but chief minister Prithviraj Chavan has got backing of two central ministers from the state.

Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar and transport minister Nitin Gadkari have opposed a directive from the tribal affairs ministry to keep rules diluting the Forest Rights Act (FRA) in abeyance.

In March this year, the Maharashtra government had notified new forest management rules which authorised a village committee regulated by area forest official to implement all central laws in forest areas, including the watershed FRA that allows locals to harvest forest produce and claim rights over notified green areas.

Two days before the state government could force the gram sabhas to adopt the rules on Independence Day, the tribal affairs ministry directed it to keep the rules in abeyance.

The tribal affairs ministry said it violated the spirit of the FRA - the law brought in by the previous United Progressive Alliance government to undo the historic injustice to tribals and forest dwellers of curbing their rights by the British.

Within six days of the tribal affairs ministry's directive, local Congress leaders wrote to Gadkari and Javadekar seeking their intervention to force the ministry to withdraw its order.

On 19 August, Gadkari wrote a strongly-worded letter to tribal affairs minister Jual Oram saying the rules were being opposed by non-tribal groups in Maoist-affected Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra whereas the locals were in favour of the rules.

He also alleged that the ministry's directive was based on opposition by those groups and its one-sided order was not correct.

That was not enough to budge Oram, a tribal himself, and withdraw his ministry's directive.

On August 29, on directions of Javadekar the environment ministry issued a formal order stating that the rules were framed under the Indian Forest Act of 1927 giving rights to foresters to manage jungles by keeping locals out and was not in violation of the Forest Rights Act.

It also asked the tribal affairs ministry to withdraw its direction saying the Maharashtra government rules were notified with a view to institutionalise an effective and efficient management regime for conservation and long term sustainability of forests.

The tribal affairs ministry has so far resisted the pressure from the Congress-ruled state government and two central ministers in the BJP government.

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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