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Tribal rights Act tied up in red tape by Liz Mathew

Even legislation championed by Sonia Gandhi can get stuck in bureaucratic limbo—witness the fate of amendments that needed to be made quickly to a law that seeks to safeguard the rights of tribals.

The combined backing of the National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Congress president Gandhi, and the political leadership of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government hasn’t been enough to put in place new guidelines meant to remove the ambiguities in the forest rights Act (FRA), leading to further delays in one of the ruling coalition’s key items of legislation.

Even a ministerial note four months ago asking that the amended rules for the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, be issued hasn’t had any effect, documents reviewed by Mint show.

The delay has already cost one minister his job, according to two senior Congress leaders, who did not want to be identified. According to them, Kantilal Bhuria was removed from the tribal affairs ministry following his failure to implement the law. Kishore Chandra Deo succeeded Bhuria as tribal affairs minister last July. Bhuria declined to comment.

The infringement of tribal rights during the exploitation of natural resources, necessary to keep India’s economy ticking, has led to increased support for the Maoist insurgency, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calls the country’s biggest internal security threat.

The law, which seeks to ensure that tribal populations have their rights protected, was drawn up after pressure from activists and NAC, approved by Parliament in 2006 during the first term of the UPA, and notified on 11 January 2008.

Following complaints from different parts of the country over the law not being implemented, NAC sent a detailed recommendation regarding amendments to FRA pertaining to community rights, individual rights and the role of villages in the implementation of these rights, on 12 March 2011.

A national committee, formed in April 2010 and headed by N.C. Saxena, also a member of NAC, visited 17 states in seven months and found that the implementation of the landmark Act, which overturned several colonial-era laws that denied forest dwellers entitlement to land and other resources, had been “terrible”.

“Some of the rules formed initially could easily be twisted for making it difficult to be implemented or could be abused. There were too many discrepancies with regard to community forest rights and the patta distribution,” said a ministry official familiar with the developments.

According to the same official, NAC’s recommendations were rejected by the ministry under Bhuria, insisting that “existing statutory provisions, rules and notifications already issued cover the field sufficiently”, and that new directions were not required. The note sent to NAC also said its recommendations were “beyond the ambit/purview of the FRA and are not the mandate of the MoTA (ministry of tribal affairs)”.

“Instead of seeing how the amendments could be brought within the framework to ensure the effective implementation of the law, some officials, including the secretary, simply rejected the suggestions, whereas 90% of them could be incorporated,” the official said.

Tribal affairs secretary Arvind Kumar Chugh, who sent the note to the minister rejecting the proposals, could not be reached for comment. Chugh’s note was in effect passed on to NAC by Bhuria’s office.

When he took over, Deo asked ministry officials to review the stance on the NAC recommendations. With no positive response forthcoming, the minister then took it upon himself in October last year to send a note explaining how to bring about the changes and issued instructions to this effect.

The note, reviewed by Mint, explained that further amendments to FRA could be made through supplemental rules in the Act itself and that there were provisions in the law passed by Parliament to amend the rules through clarifications.

Rather than responding to the minister’s suggestions, ministry officials sent the amended rules to the law ministry for its views, without informing Deo.

“There was no need to send the amended rules to the law ministry. It seems it has been done deliberately to delay the process,” said the official cited above.

Although Deo refused to comment on the issue, an official familiar with the development said the minister had not been informed about seeking the law ministry’s opinion.

In an interview that was carried in the 27 February edition of Mint, Deo said he had issued orders to the officials regarding the changes in the guidelines.

“Of the rules framed, some negate the very purpose of the Bill. Some conditions in the Act (force) the forest dwellers (to) prove they have the rights on it. About 1.4 million claims have been recognized..., but more appalling (than) this is that an equal number have been rejected. I want to change some guidelines and I have finalized some of them. I have issued orders also and now it is with the ministry,” he said.

Tribal rights activists are angered by the delays.

“The implementation of the forest rights Act has been abysmal and very poor,” said Shankar Gopalakrishnan of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity, a non-governmental organization working for forest dwellers. “Officials of the forest department and the other departments have been hijacking the law, and the forest dwellers have not yet received their dues. The NAC recommendations would have been a significant step forward to address these issues.”

The ambiguities in the rules have been exploited by the forest department and other government officials, he said, adding that officials have shown no interest in implementing the law effectively.