"We demand the adaptation of a national model to develop forest villages for the tribal and nomadic groups of Jammu and Kashmir on the prototype of other states. We also call for recognition of its primitive culture through extension of the National Conservation Act, 1980 and Forest Right Act 2006, to the State," Secretary, Tribal Research and Cultural Foundation (TRCF), Jvaid Rahi said.
This would help rehabilitate the community legally and constitutionally in areas belonging to it since centuries, he said.
He pleaded for constitutional safeguards to rehabilitate nomadic and semi-nomadic Gujjar-Bakerwal in forest villages and said that since both the Acts had not been extended to Jammu and Kashmir till date and in absence of similar rights in the state's constitution, the nomadic communities especially the Gujjars and Bakerwals suffer.
There were thousands of tribal forest villages developed with the financial assistance of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs in different states of the country, but the nomads of Jammu and Kashmir were without any such facilities, he claimed.