Tribals, farmers, and members of other marginalized groups marched from Nashik to Mumbai in February despite adverse weather conditions. Their common objectives included the widespread adoption of Maharashtra’s Forests Rights Act in 2006.
The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, often known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA), has not yet been put into effect in twenty-one districts of Maharashtra. The principal causes for the legislation’s non-implementation in these areas, according to authorities aware of the situation, are a lack of clarity and knowledge of the law and laziness.
In order to recognize the customary rights of tribal and other people that reside in the woods over the management and use of natural resources, the Forest Rights Act was established in India in 2006. This historic law recognizes the importance that local people play in forest protection and aims to return the woods to them.
The legislation passed by the Maharashtra government regarding the administration of the state’s forests are in conflict. The Forest Rights Act of 2006 is focused on recognizing the rights of communities that live in the forests and the need to institutionalize their access to the forest and its reserves, whereas the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 and the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 were legislation to protect the wildlife within the forests. According to a source, the forest department denies access to the natural resources inside the woods to the populations living there while enforcing regulations relating to wildlife preservation and forest conservation.
“They accuse the tribal people of collecting even the natural fruits that grow in the woods. The forest guards are intimidating the illiterate tribal people, according to a source.
Wildlife conservationists agreed with this source’s remarks. According to a conservationist who works closely with the forest guards, tribal people and other tribes are scared of them, especially those who live in the woods of the state’s Gadchiroli, Chandrapur, Bandara, and Gondhia districts.
The Forest Rights Act, 2006 was modified in September 2020 by a notice that was issued by the then-Governor of Maharashtra, B S Koshiyari. This modification allowed tribal groups and other people who have historically lived in woods to construct homes in nearby forest areas. The scheduled tribes (STs) and other groups that were residing in the scheduled regions but were moving to other locations outside of their home villages due to a shortage of housing options for their expanding families were meant to benefit from this.
Maharashtra has distinguished itself among the states as the one leading in the implementation of the FRA’s provisions in the 16 years after it was passed. According to a research done by the Community Forest Rights Learning and Advocacy in 2017, marking the tenth anniversary of the state’s implementation of the FRA, Maharashtra’s achievement was attributed to the district of Gadchiroli’s record-breaking recognition of community forest rights. An estimated 66% of Gadchiroli’s prospective land was recognized by the state as having rights. The results then highlighted the failure to put the regulations into practice in 21 Maharashtra districts.
According to the legislation, traditional forest residents may ask the state government for either individual or collective rights for the forest grounds they call home. They now have the responsibility to safeguard and preserve the woods in their regions. Additionally, they were allowed to harvest tendu or bamboo, both of which were prohibited before to the passage of this Act.
Gadchiroli has performed very well in the implementation of FRA due to the strong Adivasi movement there. The first two villages in Gadchiroli and around the nation where community forest rights were recognized were Mendha Lenka and Mardha. After 2012, the format for applications was adopted from the applications from these two communities.
The local forest regulations that were previously in place under the Indian Forest (Maharashtra) Act were announced by Maharashtra in May 2014. According to these regulations, the communities’ management rights over forest products were returned to the forest department. Due to ignorance, the communities chose to have the forest department handle their output, even though they have the option of managing it under community forest rights.
Sources claim that the Maharashtra government started leasing forest land to the Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra in 2017 without first getting approval from the gram sabhas in the villages. The state government gave its representatives a decision-making advantage by establishing joint forest management committees in the communities.
The Maharashtra government at the time began multifaceted tactics in May 2018 to rethink the FRA implementation across the state. The Van Mitra Mohim, which featured a number of training sessions for committee officials at the district-level committee and sub-division level, was inaugurated on May 11, 2018. Understanding the nature and procedure of recognizing claims of forest rights was the goal of this exercise. A sizable number of forest rights coordinators received training on how to speed up the hearing of appeals at different levels, examine rejected appeals, resolve existing appeals, and make it easier to file new claims.
The office was moved from Tribal Commissionerate in Nashik to Tribal Research and Training Institute in Pune in May 2018 to promote better FRA implementation.
Ajit Navle, General Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha, claims that the lack of clarity is a key factor in the failure to execute the FRA. Farmers from all around Maharashtra walk to Azad Maidan in Mumbai as part of the Kisan Long March, which is led by Navle and others since 2017. About 60,000 to 70,000 farmers, tribal people, and other members of underrepresented groups marched from Nashik to Mumbai in March 2018 to demand, among other things, the implementation of the Forest Rights Act. The same demands led to a repeat of this march in March 2023 and February 2019 respectively.
Many marchers told Outlook in February of this year that the forest guards would demolish their houses and often standing crops that were ready to be harvested if they didn’t pay the forest authorities. They were also labeled “encroachers” and their homes would be destroyed. The Adivasis and other forest inhabitants were persecuted by the forest authorities, according to several wildlife activists operating in the Vidarbha jungles.
Community forest rights have been widely implemented in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha area. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006 recognized the community forest rights claims in the name of the gram sabhas. 53% of the state’s total forest cover is located in the Vidarbha area, which also contains 28% of the state’s tribal population.
With a sizable tribal population, this region has underdeveloped infrastructure, an agricultural crisis, unemployment, poverty, and rural-to-urban migration. Due to a lack of work possibilities and other forms of support, the forest dwellers in Vidarbha have been dependent on agricultural and forest resources for their survival. With local grassroots groups and non-governmental organizations, the Maharashtra Tribal Development Department is putting a number of community forest resource management plans into action.
