In the current case, which engendered the Supreme Court ruling, petitions were filed by Wildlife First, a non-governmental organisation, and retired forest officials who blamed the Act for deforestation and encroachment of forest lands. Fearing the Act would result in a land-grab, multiple petitions were filed challenging the Act. The Act, however, ran into entrenched opposition from the country’s forest bureaucracy and some wildlife conservationists. As for non-tribal communities living in forests, they had to establish a continuous 75-year occupation for eligibility. Scheduled Tribes in actual occupation of forestland by December 13, 2005, were eligible. They did not confer ownership, only the right to use. Individuals and communities could now apply for rights to a forest – the right to fish in a pond, to cultivate their existing plot in the forest, to collectively manage a forest. To protect forest-dwelling communities from evictions, to secure their livelihoods, and to give them a say in forest governance, it brought in a rights-based regime. The Act was an attempt to break this cycle. Since colonial times, as governments asserted their control over India’s forests, the country’s forest history has become a cycle of evictions from forestlands and rebellions by forest dwellers. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act was intended to correct the “historical injustice” done to traditional forest dwellers.
This is the latest chapter in the fraught history between the Indian state, people and forests. The petitioners had demanded that state governments evict those forest dwellers whose claims over traditional forestlands under the landmark law had been rejected. The order came while the court was hearing petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. On February 13, the Supreme Court ordered the eviction of more than 10 lakh families of Adivasis and other forest-dwellers from forestlands across 16 states. Who are the people whose claims over forestlands have been rejected by state governments in India? Former DU professor GN Saibaba acquitted by Bombay HC in Maoist links case.T20 World Cup: Mohammed Shami announced as Jasprit Bumrah’s replacement in India’s squad.Doctor G review: Comedy about a male gynaecology intern belabours the point.Gyanvapi case: Varanasi court refuses carbon dating of ‘shivling’ found in mosque complex.Centre says deported anthropologist Filippo Osella was in ‘highest category of blacklisting’.Watch: This ‘idli ATM’ in Bengaluru makes and serves fresh food at the press of buttons.Protesting shrinking freedoms, walking for hope: What I saw on the Bharat Jodo Yatra.An Anglo-Indian writer offers insights into the colourful history of his community’s cuisine.
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