The four member Central team led by former Union environment secretary, Meena Gupta visited the proposed Posco hit villages Dhinkia, Patana, Gobindpur and interacted with affected villagers on Friday to study the implementation of Forest Rights Act (FRA) and rehabilitation measures for displaced families.
During interaction, villagers of Dhinkia showed the team the records dating back to 1889 to plead that the area, which is being described as forest land, was part of the Burdhwan Estate and the then Anchal Adhikari, Kujang had issued land documents to people who had been staying on there since.
They also furnished settlement map of 1930 to claim that the area has been categorized as forest land since then. Hence, they need to be treated as traditional forest dwellers, who had been depending on forest land for three generations.
Team leader Meena Gupta queried, “whether the state government has taken any steps for training and creating awareness about FRA among villagers of Dhinkia” and asked them to submit their list through FRA committee and Palisabha to stake claim on their rights under FRA.
Responding to her queries, sarpanch of Dhinkia, explained that neither the district administration nor the state government has taken any steps in this regard. He also informed that though the panchayat conducted pallisabha on 23rd March, ’08 to submit applications of villagers through FRA committee, no format of application was supplied to them by the administration. Hence, the villagers engaged in anti-Posco agitation have not yet submitted applications to stake their claims under FRA, he added.
Sarpanch further said, palli sabhas were conducted on 3rd, 5th and 6th February’ 10 at Nuagaon and Dhinkia and Gobdinpur in which villagers had opposed the proposed diversion of forest land as it was their major source of livelihood.
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He accused the administration of presenting false reports on pallisbhas to the Central government for obtaining forest clearance for the Posco project.
Panchayat samiti member, Basudev Behera refuted the state government’s claim about their being no tribals in the Posco site and said, there are seven tribal families out of which one tribal woman Meena Hembram of Santhal community is a ward member from ward no 9 of Gadkujang panchyat.
He alleged that the district officials have shifted seven tribal families from the Posco site two days back to prove that there was no tribal in the project area.
Pointing out that the area came under costal regulation zone of Paradip port and the government has declared this stretch as Lease Barred Area since 1960, the villagers questioned how the land would be leased out to Posco for the project.