India forest dwellers to fight mass eviction order with protests

BANGKOK: India’s forestdependent communities are to petition and protest against a court order to evict more than 1 million indigenous people whose land claims were rejected, land rights campaigners said yesterday.

Earlier this month, India’s Supreme Court asked officials in nearly two dozen states to submit details of claims that were settled under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006, and evict those whose applications were turned down before July 24.

The FRA, passed by the Congress government, which is now the main opposition party, aimed to improve the lives of impoverished tribes by recognising their right to inhabit and live off forests where their ancestors had settled.

Under FRA, at least 150 million people could have their rights recognised to about 40 million hectares of forest land, but government data showed that more than half the claims have been rejected.

Congress party President Rahul Gandhi, who has made land rights a key part of his campaign ahead of national elections due by May, on Saturday asked chief ministers of Congress-led states to file petitions against the court order ‘to preempt large scale evictions’.

The Tribal Affairs Ministry on Friday said it would defend the constitutional validity of FRA, and ‘do everything to safeguard the interests of the tribals’.

But its assurance is too late, said Geetanjoy Sahu of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai, who has researched FRA.

“The ministry should have ensured states implemented FRA properly, and helped claimants who were rejected, as they got no explanation and had no clue about the appeals process,” he said. — Thomson Reuters Foundation