New Delhi: Maharashtra has rejected over 60% of the claims of individual land titles filed by tribals under the Forest Rights Act. Data complied by the state’s Tribal Development department till March 31 shows that 2,24,874 of the 3,59,745 claims for Individual Forest Rights (IFR) – or 62.5% – were rejected, Indian Express reported.The claims were filed as per the law that came into force in 2006 – under which forest dwellers can lay claims to legal titles for the land that they use. A 2015 study by the Rights and Resources Initiative claims that in the country, tribals legally hold only about 5% of the land that they use.Under the Act, filing of claims involves a three-tier process involving local bodies. Individuals can file title claims to the gram sabha that are then approved by a sub-divisional committee, and eventually, at the district level, by a divisional committee.As per the records accessed by the English daily, the BJP-led Maharashtra government processed 3,35,660 – or 93% – of the IFR claims it received and of the 1,10,786 claims that have been accepted, land titles have been given to 1,10,589 claimants. This covers an area of 2,60,271.52 acres.The Rights and Resources Initiative study suggests that the rate of title claim rejection has gone up since the NDA government came to power in 2014. However, as The Wire previously reported, data from the ministry shows that non-BJP states have also been reluctant to grant land titles to tribal claimants. Since 2008, the average rate of rejection has been 54%.In March, over 40,000 farmers had walked 180 km from Nashik to Mumbai to press for their demands, including the immediate implementation of the Forest Rights Act. As Sukanya Shantha reported in April, unlike the oft-made demands of providing a loan waiver to farmers, the focus of the ‘long march’ was more on gaining rights over the land the farmers have been tilling for generations.“The law is clear that they should be dependent on the land, not necessarily living in one place for three generations,” Geetanjoy Sahu, assistant professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, was quoted by the Indian Express as saying.The daily further reported that the Tribal Development Department is currently implementing a ‘Van Mitra’ (friends of the forest) programme to train officials about the law. According to officials, the common belief is that tribal claimants are encroachers and their claims are similar to diverting forest land. The department is looking to overcome the problem by training officials.A majority of the claims, as per the records, have come from sub-divisional level committees (SDLCs). Pratibha Shinde of the Lok Sangharsha Morcha in Nandurbar explained the reasons for it: “That was largely because the SDLC members themselves were never trained on the law. They rejected thousands of claims on grounds that there was no satellite map showing cultivation attached to the claim, or that there was no evidence of a court-imposed penalty for cultivating forest land.”Shinde further said that even the process of filing appeals against the district-level committees’ decision remains slow. According to the data accessed by the daily, of the appeals filed by IFR claimants, only 41.37% were accepted. There is also a backlog of 10,115 and 25,342 appeals with the sub-divisional level committees and district level committees respectively.
