 "Compensatory Afforestation Bill's fate to be decided on Monday")
The Congress has yet again decide to oppose the NDA government’s Compensatory Afforestation Bill 2015 which is to be dealt with in the Rajya Sabha on Monday. But, its indecisiveness through the past week over the issue could ensure that the bill eventually sails through the upper house. If the bill does pass, it would be a positive turnaround for NDA which, after passing it in the Lok Sabha, had held back from moving on the bill in upper house, correctly assessing that the opposition had the intent and the numbers to force amendments in the proposed Act – ones that it didn’t desire.
“The understanding between the government and us (the Congress) does not stand anymore after the happenings in the Parliament on Thursday and Friday. We will table the amendment against the bill in Rajya Sabha and ask for a division of votes regardless of whether we have the numbers or not,” said Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, speaking to Business Standard on Friday evening. While the Congress plan for the amendment is back in play, its confidence in being able to force the amendments along with other opposition allies is not as visible.
But the Congress line on Saturday was decidedly different than the one Ramesh had taken on behalf of the party earlier in the week after a meeting of Congress leaders with finance minister Arun Jaitley, environment minister Anil Madhav Dave and other BJP leaders. Ramesh, part of the meeting along with Digvijay Singh, had come out to announce that the two parties had struck a compromise: Congress would not oppose the bill on the basis of an assurance from Dave on the floor of the house that its concerns would be incorporated later in the attendant rules of the new legislation.
The bill and tribal rights
The proposed legislation is meant to unlock a fund of Rs 40,000 crore to which about Rs 2,000-4000 gets added on average every year. When industries and miners chop down forests to set up their units they have to contribute to this fund at a fixed rate. The money is meant to be used to set up plantations elsewhere in the state in lieu of the forests lost. The fund was created in 2006 on the orders of the Supreme Court. But, since then, nearly 90% of the fund has accumulated and remained stuck with the central government instead of being reverted back to the states from where the were collected. The Union government wants to pass the bill to reverse this situation and ensure that 90% of the funds go back to the states to utilise for forestry purposes.
The NDA, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has advocated the passage of the bill reminding that all states, especially the ones with greater green cover, would only gain from the funds being repatriated for carrying out more plantations and for other forest-related activities.
But during the last monsoon session Congress, the Left and other opposition parties such as the Left, TMC and JD(U) found a reason to oppose the CAF Bill. They contended that the bill trampled over the rights of tribals granted under the Forest Rights Act.
Congress’ Jairam Ramesh wrote to the then environment minister Prakash Javadekar noting the common stance of these opposition parties. He noted that the FRA made the gram sabha (village council) the sole authority in charge of taking a final decision on what activities would be permitted on tribal and other forest-dwellers’ traditional forest lands. He warned that previously too in many states tribals and state forest department had ended up in conflict with the latter trying to impose plantations on traditional forestlands.
The CAF Bill does not acknowledge the role or the power of the tribal and forestdwellers’ gram sabha explicitly. The opposition, led by Congress asked that the bill be amended to explicitly state that the gram sabha’s prior informed consent would be mandatory for the forest department to use these vast sums for plantations or other activities on their lands. Many tribal right organisations and NGOs too demanded the same.
The then environment minister Prakash Javadekar contended that saying so in black and white was not essential. He said implementation of all new laws essentially respected the provisions of existing ones unless they explicitly overrode the earlier legislations. Congress argued that the veto power of the tribals and forest dwellers had to be clearly provided for in the law itself. It said the requirement could not be taken as implicit in the law or mentioned merely in the rules to the law later, as the BJP had suggested it might do.
Congress flip flop
For Congress this was an opportune pro-poor political issue after its victory over amendments to the land acquisition law. NDA’s record on environment and tribal issues has been sullied since the beginning of its tenure with the taint of trying to repeatedly dilute the powers of tribals under the Forest Rights Act. The NDA has consistently denied such dilutions despite a string of media stories over two years on them.
The FRA, legislated during UPA, provides a more democratic legal framework to manage forestlands. The law’s progressive credentials got burnished when the Supreme Court put a stamp of approval on it letting the Odisha tribal community Dongria Kondh hold veto over mining by Vedanta of their traditional forest lands. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi had then claimed to stand by the tribals against the mining giant turning it into an international David versus Goliath story.
After an array of other FRA dilution reports, media recently reported a story about the NDA refusing to act even as the BJP government in Chhattisgarh cancelled existing tribal rights under FRA to help Adani mine forests for coal. The Congress jumped at the occasion to call Narendra Modi’s government anti-tribal. It announced that Rahul Gandhi would soon launch a country-wide tour to drum-up support in favour of FRA and against Modi government’s attempts to dilute it.
The beginning of the monsoon session, on July 19, Congress President Sonia Gandhi told her Parliamentary Committee, “The government has snatched rights of Adivasis, Dalits and traditional forest dwellers under Forest Rights Act and weakening environment rights.” But the very next morning, media reported that the Congress and the BJP leaders had struck a deal on the Compensatory Afforestation Bill. Congress had agreed to what it had once opposed: that the veto powers of tribals and others be reflected later in the rules that the government formulates to go with the CAF bill and the government give an assurance to this tune in the Parliament.
But on Thursday, the BJP tried a late-night manoeuvre to pass the bill in Rajya Sabha even as Congress walked out over atrocities against Dalits in Gujarat. That was blocked by Congress, but Friday turned more acrimonious as the BJP tried to reclaim public attention by shifting focus on indiscretions of AAP MP Bhagwant Mann in videographing the insides of Parliament, shifting focus away from the atrocities against Dalits in Gujarat.
We had a private member bill on special status for Andhra Pradesh which would have passed otherwise in Rajya Sabha on Friday. But they created the din to block it. Now the agreement between us (on CAF Bill) is off. I don’t think we can work with this government. The happenings have cast a shadow even on the possible passage of GST,” Ramesh said.
But other opposition parties remain unclear about how far the Congress is willing to push on the issue. TWhile the Left has repeated its intention of backing the Congress on the amendments, it remains unknown if the Congress has worked the back channels with other opposition parties to garner support or is merely going to impress its pro-tribal credentials with the amendments in the house alone and let the numbers decide if NDA gets its legislation through or not. We shall know by the time Monday ends.
