People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 02
January 12, 2014
|
Vol. XXXVIII
No. 02 January 12, 2014 |
Efforts to
Sabotage FRA Protested On January 8,
CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and former MP, Brinda
Karat, addressed the following
letter to Dr
Manmohan Singh, the prime
minister, on the reported proposal
to amend the I AM writing to
you in regard to the violation of the
Forest Rights Act and the blatant illegalities being
committed by the Ministry
of Environments and Forests by giving approval to
projects without the
concurrence of the Gram Sabhas or a recognition of the
rights of adivasis in
the concerned forest areas, as mandated by the FRA. To
legalise these
violations and further facilitate the takeover of forest
land for projects
including those for the private sector, the Environment
Ministry is proposing
amendments to the It is reported
that the ministry has the full sanction
of the PMO for these amendments as they are in line with
the recommendations
made earlier by the three member committee set up
convened by the principal secretary
in the PMO. The proposed amendments include: 1) Empower the
collector to "complete the process
of recognition of rights," which the collector cannot do
under the Act, as
this power lies with the Gram Sabha and the higher
committees. 2) Allow the
collector to certify whether rights
recognition is complete, when the FRA requires that only
the Gram Sabha can
give such a certification --- as MoEF itself had
recognised in its 2009 order. 3) Require that
the process of recognition be
completed within 30 to 60 days when the Forest Rights
Rules require at least
three months for the filing of claims alone. Having
failed to implement this
Act for the past six years, the government now seems to
want to short circuit
the entire process. 4) Give the
Collectors implicit discretion to decide
which Gram Sabhas' consent should be taken, when the
fully informed consent of
all affected Gram Sabhas is a requirement, as also held
by the Supreme Court in Orissa
Mining Corporation vs Union
of India and Ors. The amendments also say nothing
about what information
should be given to Gram Sabhas. In
sum, these amendments
will make it even easier to hand over forest land
without complying with the
Forest Rights Act for which it is not the MOEF but the
Tribal Affairs Ministry
which is the nodal ministry. Already in case
after case, the MOEF has been pushing
approvals for projects leading to diversion of forest
land without the consent
of the Gram Sabhas. According to the ministry’s website,
between January 2008
and August 2011, 1,82,389 hectares of forestland were
diverted for projects
with the ministry’s approval. The monthly average of
forest land diversion has
gone up by 42 percent in 2013 from an average of 2,216
hectares in 2012 to 3,143
hectares in the first four months of 2013. Of the
projects approved, 42 percent
are for mining, 22 percent for irrigation and 10.5
percent for roads.
Significantly, there is no mention of the large numbers
of adivasi families
displaced from land and livelihood. You will kindly
recall that in the Niyamgiri Vedanta
project, it was only the Supreme Court intervention
which ensured that Gram
Sabhas were consulted even while the collector and other
officials had falsely
claimed that procedures had been followed. Similarly, in
projects in Jharkhand,
Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh, the MoEF has been
conniving with the blatant illegalities being committed
bypassing the gram
sabhas and the adivasis dependent on the forest for
their livelihood. Now, without
addressing these blatant illegalities,
the new amendments are being proposed. I request you to
intervene to ensure that the FRA is
implemented and that no such rules are framed that will
legalise the present
effort to undermine and sabotage the FRA, leading to the
elimination of the
rights of adivasis and traditional forest dwellers who
depend on the forests
for their livelihood.
