Times of India: Nagpur: Monday, August 27, 2018.
In utter
disregard of state information commission (SIC), a statutory agency, forest
department has failed to supply information on area encroached under Forest
Rights Act (FRA), 2006. The activist, who sought this information, feels that
this is to hide the failure of the department to free forest land from encroachments.
SIC after
hearing the second appeal filed by RTI activist Avinash Prabhune had passed
orders directing the department to supply relevant information to the
applicant. The order was uploaded on its website in June.
However, the
office of the additional principal chief conservator of forests (conservation)
instead of supplying information wrote to Prabhune after a month that the
required details might be available with district collectors and not with the
department.
The original
RTI application seeking information regarding FRA titles and other details
dates back to July 17, 2017. Shockingly, even after a year the department,
which is custodian of forest land, and tribal commissioner in Nashik, who is
the nodal officer for FRA, failed to supply details on area under encroachments
and that freed from it.
Both the
departments are passing the buck. The tribal commissioner says data on
encroachments and area under it is available with the forest department while
latter says that the details are available with district collectors as they are
head of the district-level committees rejecting or accepting the FRA claims.
However,
Prabhune says even if committee on claims under FRA is headed by district
collectors, a forest officer is also one of the members of this panel.
“Collectors
merely reject or accept titles pertaining to forest land and hence forest
department should supply the details. It seems forest officials are
deliberately not giving information as no action might have been taken against
encroachers,” said Prabhune.
FRA has two
components individual forest rights (IFRs) and community forest rights (CFRs).
While there are negligible cases under CFRs, which pertains to extraction of
forest produce by communities, FRA encroachments in individual category are
very high.
Under FRA the
individual titles for forest land that have been rejected are considered
encroachments and should be cleared by forest officials. Till last year, since
the implementation of FRA in 2010, 2.80 lakh individual claims have been
rejected in 26 districts of the state.
“If the
forest department and tribal commissioner have data on rejected titles, they
should also have the same on area under it and subsequently on area freed from
illegal possession,” says Prabhune.
Till now,
1,08,593 individuals have been granted titles over 2,59,579 acres of forest
land, but both, forest and tribal department, don’t have any information
regarding area encroached under the FRA.