The recent Joint Communication by both the Secretaries of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and Ministry of Tribal Affairs for implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 dilutes the very spirit of the Forest Rights Act.
The Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006 was enacted to correct the historic injustice done to Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers whose ‘forest rights on ancestral lands and their habitat were not adequately recognised in the consolidation of State forests during the colonial period as well as in independent India’.
FRA recognises and vests forest rights in the forest landscape in the country. This Act is to restrain the perpetration of coercive methods of forest department against the usage of forest lands as a matter of right.
The joint note signed by the Secretaries of both the Ministries, undermines the very role of Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA), which is the nodal ministry for implementation of the FRA so far issuing guidelines and clarifications in implementation of FRA.
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