13 lakh titles distributed for land ownership: Tribal Ministry

The government has distributed over 13 lakh individual and community titles for land ownership under the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, which is close to 87 per cent of the total claims.
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs today said 16,207 more titles are ready for distribution.
With these titles, the beneficiaries will get legal ownership of their lands.
It said the number of beneficiaries are maximum in Odisha followed by Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
As many as 3,20,910 titles have been distributed in Odisha while the figure for Chhattisgarh and MP is 2,15,443 and 1,75,941 respectively.

The total number of titles distributed across the country is 13,09,424, the Ministry said.

"We have brought about appropriate changes in the rules and issued guidelines to ease out the problems and hindrances encountered in the implementation of the Act and to provide unencumbered access to rights already conferred by the Act," it said.
The progress of implementation of the Act is being reviewed in the meetings held with the state governments and Union Territory administrations periodically, it said.
The Ministry said state governments are being directed to implement the Act as per an action plan in a time-bound manner and to make special efforts to create awareness about community rights so that more claims are filed and recognised.

A two-day regional consultation was held in Ranchi in July to review the status of implementation of the Act in the Left Wing Extremism-affected states, it said.