With the forest dwellers, especially tribals, complaining about apathetic approach of government machinery in recognising their rights under the Forest Rights Act, two special rapporteurs of the National Human Rights Commission have begun their field visits in Odisha’s Kandhamal district .
NHRC special rapporteur (tribal issues) P. P. Mathur and special rapporteur (West Bengal, Odisha and Andaman Nicobar Islands) Damodar Sarangi started interacting with villagers to get first hand information about FRA implementation.
The team is also scheduled to meet district administration to know reason behind weak implementation of the FRA. The Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), which had spearheaded campaign for enactment of FRA, alleged that district level committees regularly ignored proposals forwarded by Gram Sahbas.
As per the report of the State Level Monitoring Committee, by May 2015, as many as 60,346 Individual Forest Right (IFR) claims have been filed at the Gram Sabha level and 57,657 IFR titles issued over 87,227 acres of forest land.
According to the CSD, Odisha, 49,096 IFR titles have been issued over revenue forest land and 8,561 have been issued over reserve forest land. “Most IFR titles have been distributed without proper demarcation of land,” alleged Manohar Chauhan, member of CSD, Odisha.
In a serious violation of existing norm, massive teak plantation was taken up by forest department on 49 plots allotted to persons belonging to Kutia Kandh community at Burlubaru village in Kandhamal district, he said, adding it exhibited as to how people were made to suffer after distribution of final titles.
“The Kandhamal district administration has failed to recognise habitat rights of Kutia Kandh, a particularly vulnerable tribal group. Moreover, 1,697 IFR titles were said to have been distributed to the PVTG without undertaking proper ground verification,” said CSD activist.