Business Standard: New Delhi: Thursday,
May 05, 2016.
Representatives
of several opposition parties have come together to criticise the government
for continuing to try and dilute the provisions of the Forest Rights Act, which
makes it mandatory to get consent of tribals before using of their traditional
forestlands.
Jitendra
Chaudhury, CPI(M) member of Parliament from Tripura, shared copies of
government documents secured through the Right to Information (RTI) Act showing
that the environment ministry, tribal affairs ministry and the PMO were engaged
as recently as December 2015 in revising the regulations through an executive
fiat. Exceptions were provided to the need for consent from tribals and other
forest-dwellers.
Representatives
from the Congress, CPI(M) and JD(U) were present at the meeting, the National
Convention on Illegal Takeover of Forest Lands and Resources, held in Delhi on
Wednesday. Leaders of the Telengana Rashtriya Samiti, Bahujan Samaj Party, CPI
and the CPI (ML) Liberation sent statements of support for the meeting. The
same day, the National Green Tribunal passed an order cancelling forest
clearance to the 130-Mw Integrated Kashang Stage-II and Stage-III Hydro
Electric Project in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh.
It
ruled that the proposal be sent to the gram sabha for approval following a
Supreme Court's order. In a Vedanta mining case, the court had upheld a
government notification of 2009 requiring the forest clearance process follow
the Forest Rights Act and seek consent in areas where tribal or other people's
traditional rights exist.
This
is one of the few reported cases after the Vedanta judgment where a central
government forest clearance has been suspended by the judiciary for not having
secured the mandatory gram sabha consent of tribals. Chaudhury said, "The
environment ministry and the PMO have continuously tried to dilute the
requirement of gram sabha consent for diversion of forest lands for projects. I
have documents that show what they have tried. Some officers from the tribal
ministry have steadily opposed this. But this illegal effort has not
stopped."
Jairam
Ramesh of the Congress, also present at the meeting, said: "If the link
between forest diversion and Forest Rights Act is broken, it will severely
damage the latter."
The
documents provided by Chaudhury on Wednesday, which Business Standard reviewed,
showed that discussions and correspondence on possible route to dilutions and changes
continued within the government at least till December 2015. In November 2015,
the documents showed, the environment ministry drafted rules that would de-link
the forest clearance process from the provisions of the Forest Rights Act. The
ministry sought exemption from seeking tribal consent for underground mining as
well. The tribal affairs ministry, the documents showed, again re-iterated in a
meeting in December 2015 that clearance cannot not be given without tribal
consent. It noted that in cases where the government had tried to de-link
clearance from tribal consent, the projects had landed up in court.
The
documents suggested the matter has not been resolved conclusively. Discussions
would be held, including on new draft rules on how communities run their own
forestlands. This has been a bone of contention between the two nodal
ministries, with the environment ministry and the state forest departments
preferring to continue management of community forests in a manner that
provided a greater control to state forest departments.
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