Bhubaneswar: The state government has reportedly told the Supreme Court in an affidavit that it has rejected around 13,000 forest rights claims of tribals and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFDs).
This comes after an earlier order of the apex court in February 2019 which had asked all the tribal states including Odisha to inform the court about the claims rejected by the states under the Forest Rights Act and the procedure followed. It had caused national uproar when the court had asked the states on why they did not evict the tribals from the forest areas after rejection of their claims.
With the SC order, 1.2 lakh tribals and 20,000 OTFDs faced the threat of eviction in Odisha. However, later, the court revoked the eviction order and asked the states to supply information on the claims and their rejections with reasons.
The state government, in its latest affidavit to the SC – which was accessed by this reporter— said, “So far 13,851 individual forest rights claims have been finally rejected after detailed examination and review at all three levels –Gram Sabha, Sub Divisional Level Committee and District Level Committee.” This comprised rejected claims of 5,373 STs and 8,478 OTFDs.
The government claimed that most of the claims were rejected on the ground that many claimants were not STs while many failed to establish that they had lived in the forest areas for more than 75 years. Some other reasons cited for rejection included non-possession of forest lands, non-forest lands or late possession.
However, tribal rights and livelihood experts are angry at the alleged hasty process with which the claims had been settled keeping in view the elections and SC deadline.
“Most of the claims were settled without proper hearing. The tribals did not get ample time to contest their rejections as per rules. The rules claim that they have 60 days to contest rejections. The whole process could take around 105 days. However, most of the rejections are done with 15 days notice against norms,” Y Giri Rao, tribal affairs and livelihood expert, told Orissa POST.
Giri said that in April 2019 the rejections stood at 2,122 but nothing happened in May due to elections and from June the process was
expedited.
“Most of the tribals received notices of rejections from state in June. The whole process was done haphazardly and during deciding the fate of each case, more than 500 claims were decided on a single day giving no time for proper scrutiny,” Giri added. The SC is now all set to hear the matter July 30 and most likely to decide on the fate of the rejected claims.
