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Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

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Topic: Maharashtra Modified Forest Rights Act

Why in News?

• Recently, Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari issued a notification modifying the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006 that will enable forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes (STs) and other traditional forest-dwelling families to build houses in the neighbourhood of forest areas.
• The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 is also known as Forest Rights Act, Tribal Rights Act or Tribal Land Act.

Key Modification

• Governor noticed that certain scheduled tribes and forest-dwelling families in the scheduled areas were moving outside their native villages and migrating elsewhere in the absence of housing areas for their growing families.
• On May 18, the Governor issued a notification in exercise of the powers conferred on him by Schedule V of the Constitution, thereby modifying Section 6 of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, also known as the Forest Rights Act, in its application to scheduled areas in Maharashtra.
• According to this notification, a tribal person whose individual or community forest rights have been rejected by district-level committees constituted under special Act could appeal against the decision.
• The amendment seeks to “prevent the migration of forest-dwelling families outside their native villages and provide them housing areas by extending the village site into forest land in their neighbourhood”.

Reasons for the Amendment

• The FRA recognises rights to habitation and cultivation on forest lands if the land were occupied before December 13, 2005. The forest department officers in Jawahar division held that all new houses built in tribal habitations on forest land were illegal and had filed criminal offences and scheduled demolition.
• The urban areas get increased FSI, the rural areas (on revenue lands) get Gaothan Vistaar Yojana, but tribal villages (on forest lands) have no legal space for building houses.
• PESA rules in the State have given recognition to many habitations as villages, but there is no provision for land for house-building.

Merits of the Amendment

• The notification provides a relief to tribals whose individual or community forest rights have been rejected under the FRA, a landmark legislation enacted by the Centre in 2006.
• The decision will provide a major relief to STs and other traditional forest-dwelling families living in the scheduled areas of the state.
• The amendment is a landmark one as it assures the human rights of housing to all tribal population — especially the current generation — that has built houses after 2005.

The Forests Rights Act

• The law concerns the rights of forest-dwelling communities to land and other resources, denied to them over decades as a result of the continuance of colonial forest laws in India.
• There are two stages to be eligible under this Act. First, everyone has to satisfy two conditions:

• Primarily residing in forests or forest lands;
• Depends on forests and forest land for a livelihood (namely “bona fide livelihood needs”)
• That the above conditions have been true for 75 years, in which case you are an Other Traditional Forest Dweller (s. 2(o));
• That you are a member of a Scheduled Tribe; and
• That you are residing in the area where they are Scheduled.

• The law recognises three types of rights:

• Land Rights
• Use rights
• Rights to conserve and protect.

• The Act is significant as it provides scope and historic opportunity of integrating conservation and livelihood rights of the people.