Villagers of Nuagaon in the proposed Posco project site have alleged violation of Forest Rights Act (FRA) by the administration. In a submission to the Central team visiting the area to check on FRA violation, about 250 villagers testified that they had submitted their applications to stake claim under FRA, these were not accepted by the district administration officials in 2009.
During interaction with the Central team, villagers of Nuagaon under the banner of Bhita Mati Surkhya Janmanch said that no provisions of FRA has been implemented in Nuagaon and other areas before forest clearance from the Union Ministry Of Environment and Forest (MOEF) for the Posco project.
After intervention of National Forest Right Act (NFRA) committee, which pointed out instances of FRA violation in these areas last month, the local sub collector has instructed the panchayts to form FRA committees through pallisabha to claim their rights under FRA.
Sarpanch of Nuagaon, Bhaskar Swain informed that the panchayat had conducted gram sabha on 18th January, 2009 where it was resolved to provide rights over 271.13 hectares of land to traditional forest dwellers. After this, nearly 250 villagers had submitted applications to stake their claim under FRA, but the tehsildar did not accept their forms.
Swain said that NFRA led by Asish Kothari had asked the villagers to submit fresh applications within three months to claim their rights under FRA so the panchayat had conducted pallisabha on 29th July ’10, but no official turn up at the meeting. Hence, they could not submit fresh applications in this regard, he added.
Earlier, the Central team, led by former Union environment secretary, Meena Gupta, interacted with the members of United Action Committee in which its leader Anadi Rout said, “The FRA, 2006 is not applicable in the Posco site as neither any tribe nor any forest dwellers are staying in the area for more than 75 years to stake their claim under the act”.
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“Every year 800 labourers from the villages in the Posco site are migrating to other states in search of work. So we want the project which will create a lot of direct and indirect employment opportunities for the young generation who are not interested to work in betel vine”, he added.
The team leader Gupta said, “They are not covering the rehabilitation measures of the project proponents as the project work has not started yet. Later another team will come to cover it after the start of the project work”. She said, the team is collecting information and evidence from all groups of people, villagers, stakeholders, private persons, officials, NGOs on FRA violations .
Apart from Nuagaon, the team visited Gobindpur, Gadkujang and Noliasahi villages on Saturday and interacted with 52 families who were living in a temporary shelter after being ostracized by the anti Posco activists.