The Schedule Tribe (ST) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFD) (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, commonly called as Forest Rights Act (FRA) was enacted with the basic objective of mitigating the injustice done to the Forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes and sustainability of the forest ecosystems. While the forests rights on ancestral land and their habitat were not adequately recognized in the consolidation of state forests during the colonial period as well independent India, resulting in historical injustice to the forest dwelling ST and OTFD. Hence, the Government of India passed Forest Right Act (FRA) to address the long standing insecurity of tenurial and access rights of forest dwelling ST and OTFD including those who were forced to relocate their dwelling due to Development interventions.
Even though the broad objective and scheme of the FRA is for addressing the long felt demands of the Forest Dwellers, these objectives of FRA would definitely apply in full spirit not only in respect of STs and also to OTFDs. It is true that there were many tribal people living in the forests, their rights of housing and cultivation were not properly settled at the time of constitution of Reserve Forest/State Forest under State/Central Forest Act. FRA has not only extended the benefits to STs it is also envisages the benefits to be extended to the OTFD who are not really Tribes but their livelihood is mainly dependent on Forests. Extending the benefits of the FRA to OTFDs is bone of contention in the implementation of FRA especially in Karnataka. As far as STs are concerned, there is no hiccup in the implementation of FRA and in the present situation in Karnataka, there is a lot of hue and cry in extending the benefits of the provisions to OTFDs under FRA.
It is imperative that there is no need to discuss in detail about extending the provisions of the forest rights under FRA in respect of STs. Constitutionally STs are defined and the list of STs in each state is specified and notified by the central government. There is no confusion for providing evidence to prove ST tag. The other eligibility criterion required for recognizing the Forest Rights to STs, being the cut-off date (13/12/2005) which would be obtained from the concerned records provided by the claimant. More so, there are many options provided in Rule 13 of FRR to produce the records for evidence purpose. Hence the ST claimant has to produce at least a minimum of two evidences to claim for the forest rights.
(Written by Mr. N. L. Shanthakumar, IFS. For more details, please download the Karnataka Forest Department's, 'My forest' Journal (September - December 2015), from aranya.gov.in)
