Hindustan
Times: New Delhi: Friday, 02 October 2015.
A central
ministry has been stalling the implementation of a high-level government panel
report on tribal rights by simply not expressing its opinion on the
recommendations to impose tough norms to protect tribespeople from land
alienation.
The ministry
of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) has not responded in the
past eight months to a slew of letters from the tribal affairs ministry (MoTA)
asking for its comments on the report, HT has learnt through the Right to
Information (RTI) Act.
The panel
headed by Prof Virginius Xaxa from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)
was constituted by the UPA government to suggest policy interventions to
improve the socio-economic, health and educational status of tribals on the
lines of the Sachar Committee for Muslims.
The committee
submitted its report to the NDA government last May, suggesting several tough
measures to be inserted into the Land Acquisition Act. Prohibition on
non-tribals, including private companies, taking over tribal land, making gram
sabha consent compulsory for acquisition of land even for government use and
introduction of penalties against deliberate flouting of the Forest Rights Act
(FRA) were among the recommendations.
The
environment ministry in the past tried to do away with the gram sabha consent
clause on diverting forestland for industrial purposes, a requirement under the
FRA which some see as a hurdle to the NDA government’s economic development
push.
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi had asked the tribal affairs ministry in December last
year to get comments from various ministries and state governments before a
final decision on the report.
Government
documents reveal except the environment ministry, all the key ministries and
state governments have sent their comments to the tribal affairs ministry, most
of them endorsing the panel’s findings.
The
government’s own think tank, NITI Aayog, has said the two ministries should
work together to prevent FRA violation during the diversion of forestland for
industrial use.
The
environment ministry said in a letter this year that it had not received a copy
of the report only after the tribal affairs ministry threatened to go ahead
with a decision on the recommendations.
“We had sent
a copy of the report to all the ministries and states in December itself. When
they (MoEFCC) got back to us, we sent them another copy but we did not get any
response even then,” said a tribal affairs ministry official.
The
environment ministry’s assistant inspector general (forests policy) SN Mishra
initially expressed his ignorance about the report, but later told HT his
ministry was finalising its comments on it.
It’s been 16
months since the committee submitted its report, but it has not been made
public. “We were waiting for comments from all the stakeholders. We will now
put up thereport for a final decision without waiting any further,” said the
tribal affairs ministry official.