Chhattisgarh demands guidelines to rehabilitate tribals

The Chhattisgarh government has written to the Union Tribal Affairs Ministry to issue comprehensive guidelines for "in situ" rehabilitation of tribals displaced from the state due to Naxal violence.

Social activists claim thousands of tribals fled Chhattisgarh around 2004-05 due to Salwa Judum, a militia deployed as part of anti-Maoist operations in the state from 2005 to 2011.

Excluded from all social security benefits, these tribals are living miserable lives in neighbouring states.

There are around 30,000 people living in 248 such settlements in the forests of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, close to the Chhattisgarh border, tribal rights activist Shubhranshu Chaudhary says.

"These states don't recognise them as tribals. They have no right over forest land and remain excluded from all social security benefits. On a number of occasions, police and forest officials have burnt their settlements to push them back to Chhattisgarh," he claims.

Many tribal families are reluctant to return due to the fear of Maoist violence.

In a letter on September 20, the Chhattisgarh government's Schedule Tribes and Scheduled Castes Development Department said, "While some displaced families want to be settled in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, some families want safer place in their native districts in Chhattisgarh.

"As 'in situ' rehabilitation is to be done either over forest land or over alternative land under Section 3(1)(m) of the Forest Rights Act, and since the matter involves area of two or more states, a clarification is required whether this provision is applicable in case of interstate displacement."

In view of the circumstances, the state government has asked the ministry to "issue clarification with comprehensive guidelines for in situ rehabilitation of the displaced community under the Act".

The ministry has already ordered a survey to identify the displaced tribals eligible for rehabilitation under the FRA provision.

In June, the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes had also convened a meeting to discuss the issue.

"The NCST had asked the Chhattisgarh government to complete the survey of the displaced tribals in three months, but it is yet to get off," Chaudhary claims.