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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Maharashtra govt takes back control over tribal forests and trade in forest goods -Nitin Sethi

Maharashtra govt takes back control over tribal forests and trade in forest goods -Nitin Sethi

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published Published on Mar 10, 2016   modified Modified on Mar 10, 2016
-Business Standard

Move comes despite RSS affiliated organisation opposing such regulations

Maharashtra government has finalised regulations that will allow it to wrest back control from tribals over the lucrative forest trade in goods such as bamboo and tendu leaves worth thousands of crores annually.

This also involves management of potentially 80% of community forestlands in the state after the Union Tribal Affairs ministry’s volte-face on interpreting the Forest Rights Act.

The Forest Rights Act makes tribal and other forest-dwellers’ gram sabhas (village councils) as the sole statutory authority to manage, protect and utilise traditional community forestlands. But, Maharashtra government prepared alternative state-level regulations that would help the forest department retain complete management control over such community forests in villages.

The tribal affairs ministry after repeatedly informing the state and other arms of the central government that the regulations were illegal and unconstitutional unless approved by the President of India, eventually relented and gave the nod with some caveats. The Maharashtra government has taken the cue and gone a step further.

State government documents reviewed by Business Standard show that the state has decided these regulations, powering the forest department to retain control, will be applicable in all but three situations.

The rules, Indian Forests (Maharashtra) (Regulation of assignment, management, and cancellation of village forests) Rules 2014 will not be applicable in schedule V areas, in areas where rights of tribals have already been settled under the Forest Rights Act and in places where claims of tribals are pending.

The state has 16,600 odd villages with forestlands in their territories. Under the Forest Rights Act, the government a claim for community ownership arises in each of these villages. But as per tribal affairs ministry’s latest records, by December 2015, only 7,152 villages had formally put forth claims for community forestlands under the Forest Rights Act. Out of these 3,957 claims were accepted and 1,843 claims rejected.

In other words the Maharashtra government will be able to re-impose the forest department’s fiat in around more than 11,000 village forests (excluding those in the schedule V designated areas). As per a conservative estimation of the Washington-based think tank Rights and Resources Initiative,  the state has 3.6 million hectares of forests that could legally be handed over to tribals and forest-dwellers as traditional community forests under the FRA. Maharashtra government has so far given community rights over 349,437 hectares in comparison. A large chunk of the rest 3.3 million hectares of these forestlands could now potentially come back under the state forest department’s management control.

Documents reviewed by Business Standard shows that the RSS-affiliated Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram too wrote to the state chief minister asking that these regulations be done away with claiming that the imposition of these state regulations was formenting anger in the state. But the state government has decided to go ahead and retain the regulations with modifications.

The tribal affairs ministry too had earlier warned that the identification and settlement of community rights of tribals was in nascent stage across the country, including Maharashtra and the state could not impose its own system till all the rights of the people were settled. It had warned that this would be to the detriment of the tribals and other forest-dwellers.

But it was eventually convinced to change its legal stance with the cabinet secretariat weighing in, the Maharashtra government persistently lobbying and Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar and Nitin Gadkari – both BJP leaders from Maharashtra – asking tribal affairs ministry to back off.  

The preamble of FRA notes that the law was passed to correct the historical wrong done when tribal and others’ forest lands were taken over by the government summarily during the colonial era. Since then the forest department had retained control over these forests and the trade in forest produce, which the erstwhile Planning Commission estimated was worth Rs 50,000 crore annually. This also led to hundreds of thousands of tribals being termed as encroachers on their traditional lands in government records.

Under the rules that Maharashtra state forest department is imposing, the state forest department would have the powers to decide if and how tribals get access to their community forests by defining them as ‘village forests’. It would get to decide how the tribals sell forest produce and what revenues they can get from it. The forest department would also have the powers to withdraw these rights of tribals if it believes that the tribals and other forest-dwellers are not meeting the standards state government has set. In contrast the Forest Rights Act makes the tribal and forest gram sabhas the statutory authorities, without a role for forest department, to protect and manage their traditional forest resources.

This sets in place a route that other states also could follow to bypass handing over rights to tribals over their community forests. Madhya Pradesh has already followed suit.


Business Standard, 9 March, 2016, http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/maharashtra-govt-takes-back-control-over-tribal-forests-and-trade-in-forest-goods-116030900548_1.html


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