-Down to Earth Reflections on Supreme Court order to evict ‘illegitimate’ Tribals from the forests There is an ominous significance to the February 13, 2019 order of the Supreme Court on “illegitimate” forest-dwellers. When we first heard of it, we felt a rising dismay and shock at this judicial legitimation of unparalleled atrocity against the Tribals. The order is nothing less than the final legitimised expropriation of the tribal communities (poor landless)...

-Livemint.com * Out of the 1.8 million people living in the Banswara district in 3.6 lakh households, 78% are Tribals * With a 46.1% literacy rate, 91.3% of households earn less than ?5,000 per month Banswara, Rajasthan: When Ramchandar, 52, wakes up in his thatched house every morning in the hilly tribal village of Katumbi in Rajasthan's Banswara district, his first preoccupation is to fetch water from the nearest village at a distance...

-The Hindu It is shocking that a democratic government is seeking to strengthen the colonial-era Indian Forest Act The Indian Forest Act, 1927 was a remarkable piece of expropriation in the name of conservation. The British government carried out one of the largest land expropriations in history, where the rights to occupy and use forests were transferred from communities with customary and historical property rights to the colonial Central government. The act...

-Newsclick.in In the recently held 2018 Assembly elections, out of 48 tribal dominated seats BJP only won 16 while in 2013, the party had 34. Bhopal / Burhanpur: Demanding to uphold the Forest Rights Act 2006 (FRA) and withdrawal of the proposed amendment in Indian Forests Act 1927 by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, thousands of Tribals carried out an ‘Adivasi Adhikar Chetavni rally’ in Madhya Pradesh’s Burhanpur district...

-Business Standard Forest bureaucracy to get more policing powers, including higher immunity to use firearms and override Forest Rights Act New Delhi: The Union government has proposed an overhaul of the Indian Forest Act, 1927 which the British rulers imposed to take over Indian forests, use them to produce timber, while curtailing and extinguishing rights of millions. But, in the draft law to replace the colonial-era act, the Union government has proposed...