Ejected from forests long ago, dwellers’ claims now rejected almost en masse

Hubballi: Nearly 86 per cent of the total 2.94 lakh applications submitted under Forest Rights Act (FRA) have been rejected in the state and another 8.45 per cent (24,894) applications are pending before the authorities.

Sources in the forest department told DH that there are little chances of the remaining applications getting approval for two major reasons: non-existence of elected gram and taluk panchayats across the state and the strict rules of providing documents to prove that the claimants or their family has been living inside the forest for at least three generations or 75 years before the FRA came into existence in 2006.

Most of the 2.53 lakh applications have already been rejected twice by the state or district-Level monitoring committee after the Supreme Court instructed the states to ‘reverify’ the claims.

Karnataka has so far approved only 14,981 Individual Forest Rights (IFR) claims and 1,345 Community Forest Rights (CFR) claims.

The state had received 2.88 lakh IFR and 5,940 CFR applications. The state has parted with 56,000 acres of forest land under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.

However, activists have been accusing the government of denying the right and dignity of hundreds of forest dwellers to live in their natural habitat. 

Srikanth, director of Hunsur-based Development through Education (DEED), says hundreds of forest dwellers were wrongfully evacuated from the forests after the union government introduced the Wildlife Protection Act in 1972.

“At least 1,700 tribal families from the 32 hamlets of Nagarahole are fighting cases in various courts of India seeking rights to live inside forest. These families were displaced without proper compensation or providing required documents,” he says and adds that in spite of the apex court asking governments to reconsider the rejection of applications, successive governments have not acted.

Vittal B S, a tribal leader from Siddapur Hadlu in Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, says in 1957, their hamlet had received road and housing facilities from the central government.

“We have all documents to prove that our native place is a forest area. However, officials, who evicted us from our village in 1976 are saying that we haven’t lived there for over 25 years now, so we are not eligible for resettlement or rehabilitation”.

At least five other tribal families that DH interacted with said they were unable to provide documents as their hamlets were never recognized by the government.

Veerendra Patil, an advocate, has filed a Public Interest Litigation demanding clearance of forest land of encroachments.  He says that a majority of the claims submitted are ‘fake’ as they cannot be proven in court of law to be genuine, due to non-availability of documents.

“As the years pass, it will become even more difficult for claimants to establish their rights as they have to produce documents which are at least 100 years old,” he says and adds many of the claims had been rejected after going through the applications twice.