Forest panels set up without elections

EMPOWERING TRIBALS: PART II

The implementation of the Forest Rights Act has begun in most central Indian states. This is to lead to forest dwelling communities getting titles to the land they have been living on and thus end the threat of eviction by forest officials. Villages have started taking their first steps to claiming their entitlements: forming forest rights committees where people can make their claims.

Business Standard visited villages in three states to find that the scene varied from awareness and hope to total ignorance and difficulties like the need to get enough villagers to attend the gram sabha to elect the committee. Following is the second of a three-part series.

Dhan Singh was just 15 when the then prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and his wife visited his 'katcha' house in Kulharighat in the diamond-rich Mainpur block of Raipur district in mid-eighties. The Gandhis spent two hours with the tribals and returned with a promise to make their hamlet a "model village".

Two decades have passed since then, but these Kamaar tribals have not much to brag about in the name of development. When the Centre announced ownership rights over forest land to the traditional forest dwellers, the village was quick to form the forest rights committee consisting of villagers.

So quick that it did not even hold an election to it. Two forest officials descended on the village on February 27, and sat down with some villagers. A committee was announced after the meeting, with 15 of the villagers in it. Dhan Singh was one of them. He is clueless as to what he is expected to do.

This is the committee which will examine claims of ownership whenever villagers make them. It should have been elected by the gram sabha and not the way it was formed.

In fact, in the 12,500 villages where forest committees have been formed in the state, "elections" have meant something like what happened in Kulharighat, say civil society groups working in other districts.

In Manjiguda panchayat of Bastar district, the villagers allege: "The panchayat secretary put the signatures of the villagers who were not present in the gram sabha called to elect the committee."

According to Gautam Kumar Bandyopadhyay of the NGO Nadi Ghati Morcha, in many places, gram sabhas have been organised without completing the quorum. At least two-thirds of the village population must be present and voting to form a committee.

"In many villages, sarpanch or other panchayat representative is the president of the committee, while in few others, sarpanch has nominated the president instead of asking the villagers to elect," he added.

In Kalepal village in Dantewada district, Katekalyan block villagers were clueless about the existence of a committee. But a forest official chided the villagers and told them that a panel was very much there and many of them were members in it!

The villagers have to fill and submit application forms to claim ownership over their land. The forms are supposed to come in two colours, according to the Forest Rights Act specifications. The pink forms are for tribals and the yellow ones for non-tribal forest dwellers.

But the forms which have begun reaching the villages are all white.

The government has an explanation for this. Secretary with the department of tribal welfare M K Raut says since the forms have been cyclostyled, the colour has been lost.

"The situation is by and large the same in other parts of the state," claims Gautam Kumar Bandhopadhyay of Nadi Ghati Morcha. "The forms have not reached most of the villages. But wherever they have reached, they are in single colour," he says.

The forms also do not have serial numbers. Moreover, the authorities, after accepting the claims, are not giving a receipt to the applicants.

The state government says there is no flaw in implementing the Act in the state. "The forms have to be supplied in 12,500 villages in the state and there may be some exceptions," Raut says, adding that in many cases the villagers are making photocopy of the form and complaining that they are getting only one-colour form.

"It is not a big issue if the serial number is not in the form as it is the committee that will finalise the cases," he says. But he has no explanation for the manner in which these committees were formed.