{"id":4230,"date":"2016-04-16T20:02:39","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T14:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4230"},"modified":"2016-04-16T20:02:39","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T14:32:39","slug":"supreme-court-forest-rights-act-adivasis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4230","title":{"rendered":"Why the Supreme Court Verdict on Forest Rights Act Might Spell Disaster for Lakhs of Adivasis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Y<\/span>esterday, the <\/p>Supreme Court<\/span><\/a> released a written order of a damaging verdict that it quietly pronounced a week ago. The order called for the eviction of nearly 1 million adivasi and other tribal families who have been residing in forestlands across 16 Indian states for decades. <\/span>\n\nReacting on a PIL filed by Wildlife First, a NGO that contested the validity of the Forest Rights Act, a three-judge member, comprising Justices Navin Sinha, Indrani Banerjee, and Arun Mishra, directed state governments to evict forest-dwellers, whose claims over the lands have been rejected. The time period given to the states, that include <\/span>Chhattisgarh<\/span><\/a>, Tamil Nadu, Kerala among others, is until July 27, even though the process of reviewing or verification of ownership is still pending in a handful of states. And as per the affidavits filed by the remaining states, the total number of rejected ownership claims from these 16 states add up to \u201c11,72,931 tribal and other forest-dwelling households\u201d \u2013 a number that is bound to increase in the coming months. A number that should force the government to sit up and take notice.<\/span>\n\nTo make matters even worse \u2013 and the verdict allegedly rigged, in the face of perhaps one of the most decisive <\/span>general elections<\/span><\/a> of our time \u2013 there was no lawyer present to defend the Act, on the Centre\u2019s behalf. The order was then technically passed after hearing just one side of the argument, a convenient ploy to make the path clearer for the industrialisation of forested land and its natural resources. In fact, a sizeable number of adivasi activists and lawyers also<\/span> claim<\/span><\/a> that last week\u2019s outcome rests majorly on the \u201cweak defence of the Act\u201d that was presented by the lawyers of the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs for the last 10 years when the case regarding the Act\u2019s Constitutional validity has been dragging on.<\/span>\n\nThe last time tribals across India were similarly uprooted was also triggered by the SC-sanctioned nationwide evictions during 2002-2004, which caused irreparable damage: According to researcher CR Bijoy, the evictions <\/span>were met<\/span><\/a> with widespread protests and innumerable cases of violence and death that displaced over 3,00,000 vulnerable households. Yesterday\u2019s SC order seems insistent on repeating that history of hurting some of the country\u2019s most vulnerable communities. More importantly, it is also set to pose an insurmountable obstacle to the sanctity of the Forest Rights Act, passed in 2006 by the <\/span>Congress<\/span><\/a> government. <\/span>\n

But in the last decade, the Act has been a victim to the government\u2019s shoddy implementation of its legislation.<\/blockquote>\nAlthough India was late to pass this corrective law, the Forest Rights Act was widely considered a landmark act, which aims to \u201crecognise and vest the forest rights and occupation in forest land in forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers who have been residing in such forests for generations but whose rights could not be recorded\u201d. Besides recognising the individual rights of people who have been residing in forestland for over 75 years or have traditionally been dependent on forest produce for their livelihood, the Act also entrusted local <\/span>communities<\/span><\/a> with the task of \u201cdetermining the future of the forest\u201d.<\/span>\n\nBut in the last decade, the Act has been a victim to the government\u2019s shoddy implementation of its legislation. For instance, forest dwellers have to navigate a complicated claim process that invariably sees high rejection rates and even slower processing. According to <\/span>The News Minute<\/span><\/a>, \u201conly 40 per cent of the claims received across the country have been settled\u201d. In Chattisgarh, for instance, \u201cover half of individual rights and a third of community rights claims\u201d were denied \u2013 and this in state where adivasi communities account for a third of the population. It\u2019s not hard to argue that this scenario of poor implementation wouldn\u2019t have arisen if the Centre chose to defend and back the Act. In a way, its inaction in prioritising their needs ends up defeating the purpose of the legislation.<\/span>\n\nThe Centre\u2019s apathy is perhaps the biggest enabler of yesterday\u2019s SC\u2019s verdict that provided the cruelest blow on undermining the FRA, the only act that concerns itself with protecting not just marginalised communities, but also the forest itself. The forest department was designed to focus on mining the forest as a resource \u2013 for <\/span>tourism<\/span><\/a>, hunting, or for timber. But the generations of adivasis and tribals who have dedicated their lives to conserving and protecting the forests are labelled \u201cencroachers\u201d.<\/span>\n\nThe biggest irony remains that the Forest Rights Act \u2013 which the petition blames for deforestation \u2013 was introduced to redress the \u201chistoric injustice\u201d of the denial of adivasi rights. But yesterday\u2019s SC verdict proved that India is still nursing a colonial hangover when it comes to recognising <\/span>adivasis<\/span><\/a> and other forest-dwellers as the deserving owners of forestlands.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Centre\u2019s apathy is the biggest enabler of yesterday\u2019s SC verdict that ordered for forced evictions of over 1 million forest-dwelling households. The verdict is perhaps the cruelest blow on undermining the Forest Rights Act, that concerns itself with conserving the rights of the marginalised communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":4231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[7624,7625,4986,951,7626],"class_list":["post-4230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-adivasis","tag-forest-rights-act","tag-pil","tag-supreme-court","tag-wildlife-first"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy the Supreme Court Verdict on Forest Rights Act Might Spell Disaster for Lakhs of Adivasis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Centre\u2019s apathy is the biggest enabler of yesterday\u2019s SC verdict that ordered for forced evictions of over 1 million forest-dwelling households. 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