Threat of forced eviction of tribals and forest-dwellers still looms large

Eviction of a few lakh families, instead of millions, is not an option the government should be willing to argue before the SC

The threat of forced mass eviction of tribals and forest-dwellers from their traditional forestlands is not yet over. On July 24 the Supreme Court will hear again the case in which it had earlier ordered mass eviction of more than 1.85 million tribal and forest-dwelling families. The order, dated February 13, 2019, asked states to evict all those families whose claims to forestland under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 had been rejected. 

With the order threatening forced mass evictions in middle of election season, with civil society of all hues and Opposition parties rising nosily in protest, the Union government woke up to the crisis. It intervened to buy time till after elections. It merely asked time to ascertain if the claims of the two million families had been legitimately rejected or not.  It did not contest whether the in-principle rejection of claims can validly lead to eviction under Forest Rights Act. The Supreme Court agreed and stayed its eviction order, but only temporarily. The Centre bought some breathing time. 

Since then the Union tribal affairs ministry has actively engaged with the state governments concerned, getting them to verify if the large-scale rejection by the governments of claims  filed by tribals over their traditional forestlands followed the provisions of the law or not. 

The Union tribal affairs secretary was recently quoted as stating that after scrutiny by states the number of claims legally rejected under Forest Rights have been found to be “considerably lower” than the earlier calculated 1.85 million households. Although he did not divulge numbers, state officials who have been engaged in the discussions suggest even with this quick scrutiny, the country could still see forced and summary eviction of several hundred thousand tribal and forest-dwelling families. 

One option before the Union government now is to go before the Supreme Court and argue that the number of rejected claims is much lower than previously reported and these people can be evicted. The problem is that this could still lead to mass forced-eviction of several lakh families.

It would be ironic that evictions would be ordered under a law that was meant to give justice to citizens whose rights over their lands have been wrongly erased from records. “A majority of these tribal and forest-dwelling communities continued to live on their traditional forestlands but the records showed them as encroachers. Consequently, they faced continuous harassment. The FRA was to ensure the records correctly reflect them as dwelling and using these lands. Now instead, the FRA could be used to physically evict them as well,” said one senior state official dealing with the fall out of the Supreme Court eviction orders. 

The other option before the Centre is to argue on more fundamental issues involving the law and the particular case. Till 2016, the Union government had argued before the Supreme Court that the petitioners in the original case filings had one plea — that the law is not constitutionally valid. This is true, the original argument of the petitioners — select wildlife groups and retired forest officers — was that the Centre did not have the powers to legislate on issues of land, which is a State subject and that law impeded on the right to environment and precautionary principle and, therefore, was unconstitutional. 

The petitioners had not gone to the court asking for implementation of the case. Therefore, the Union government in 2016 argued that the court should not turn it into a case about pursuing the implementation of the law. 

But in 2017 and 2018 the petitioners focused their oral arguments entirely away from their original written plea questioning the validity to one only about evictions of rejected claimants. Oddly, at this stage, their shift of focus was not contested by the Centre. The Supreme Court too began passing orders asking states to report on the status of implementation of the law which ended up eventually in February 2019 with summary eviction orders. 

Now, the Union government and the states are expected to submit their fresh affidavits in the case by the second week of July. This could be the Centre’s only chance to either argue in principle against evictions or settle for lakhs being evicted and claim a hollow victory that the numbers aren’t in millions.