Gujarat tribals wait for FRA claim settlement as govt takes over forest lands

It has been nearly 10 years since Dasratbhai filed an application for forest land rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 in early 2014. But the resident of Kadavadi, a village inhabited by Dungri tribals in central Gujarat’s Aravalli district, is yet to acquire ownership of his land or hear from the administration.

Over the years, all Dasratbhai has done is collect copies of field verification reports from various forest rights committee visits and proof of occupation and cultivation of land. And Dasratbhai is not alone. Most tribal families of Kadavadi share his fate as they wait to hear from the state government regarding their claims under the law called Forest Rights Act (FRA) in short.

About 600 km away, in Bhuj, 47 tribal families of the Banni grassland also have a similar tale to tell. The state government is yet to award titles to the 47 claims filed since 2014 by the tribal communities living in the Banni area. And yet, all this time, more than 16,000 hectares of forest land, on which tribals had claimed their first rights, have been diverted by the government to various development purposes.

A court case

Notably, in November 2020, Action Aid Research, a Gujarat-based NGO, had filed a PIL alleging that 1.28 lakh claims for forest rights were awaiting settlement for more than seven years. Following that, the Gujarat High Court had issued a notice to the state government, asking it to expedite the process. Thereafter, the BJP government had settled both community and individual claims for about a year, but after that, the process went into a limbo all over again.

According to government data, the total number of claims it received for the settlement of both individual and community rights till June 2017 was 190,056. The June 2022 report reveals that no new application has been accepted since then and the figure still stands at 190,056. Of these, only 9,053 applications have been cleared in the past three years, while the rest remain pending or have been rejected.

Some 34,500 of the claims received between 2014 and 2022 are pending settlement at various levels of the state government, says the data from July 2022. Among the 14 districts where the act has been implemented, Dahod in central Gujarat has the largest number of FRA applications — 16,581 — pending since 2014.

“The Gujarat government has never been transparent while implementing the FRA in the 14 tribal-dominated districts. Applications under the FRA have been pending with the state government since 2014. Tribals across Gujarat have been waiting for ownership of their land. Plus, the government has not been accepting new applications,” said Romel Sutariya, Gujarat-based tribal rights activist.

Sutariya said more than 30 per cent of the applications filed till 2014 have been rejected on various grounds, too. “But there is discrepancy in the process of rejection, too. While most applications from central Gujarat have been rejected on grounds of one member of the family being a salaried person or holding a government job, in south Gujarat’s tribal districts, most of the applicants have had their claims rejected for the lack of two required documents. Most tribals usually keep more than two proofs of their use of land, though they are aware that only two are required,” Sutariya added.

Court orders not implemented

In May 2013, the Gujarat High Court had ordered the state government to review rejected FRA claims from 13 districts rejected by the government despite being sanctioned for approval by the Gram Sabhas concerned.

The order had come following two PILs that had claimed that the Gujarat government was not implementing the provisions of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, despite tribals comprising nearly 14.75 per cent of the total population of the state. The PILs had also claimed that the Gujarat government had rejected 1.13 lakh claims of the 1.82 lakh it had received thus far.

Later, in 2019, a three-judge Division Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Arun Kumar Mishra (now retired) issued an order, directing all state governments to undertake reviews of FRA claims rejected on various grounds. Despite the orders from the apex court and Gujarat High Court, the government is yet to review the rejected claims or expedite the pending application as ordered by the high court in 2020.

Diversion of scheduled land for industrial projects

On the flip side, 16,070.58 hectares of forest land, on which tribals had claimed their first rights under FRA 2006, have been diverted to various development purposes under the Forest Conservation Act 1980, data tabled in the Parliament on August 7, 2023, has revealed. The information was shared after Congress MP Amee Yagnik raised a question in the Rajya Sabha about tribal claims for land rights under the FRA.

Somabhai of Neempada in Dang district is one of the many tribals of Gujarat whose land has been occupied by the government despite his application under FRA pending since 2016. “The forest department showed up one day and erected fences and dug around my land. My family initially thought the fence was being installed for the forest department to plant trees but we were wrong,” the 46-year-old told The Federal.

“We kept telling them repeatedly that our jungal zameen na dawa (forest rights claim) is pending with the Collector of Dang, but nobody listened to us,” said Kedubhai, another tribal villager in Dang district whose application lay pending as well as the state government occupied it.

“Twenty-six claims to the forest land under the FRA were filed from the village in 2008. The sub-divisional committee at the block level took until 2016 to reject all of them. The locals then filed those claims again. The appeals are now pending with the collector while the government continues to divert tribal land for various projects,” said Sutariya.