Our forest our rights: implementation status of Forest Rights Act – 2006
Our forest our rights: implementation status of Forest Rights Act – 2006
The Forest Rights Act 2006 recognises and secures Community Rights/Community Forest Resources of the communities, in addition to their Individual Rights. The Act came into force from 2008, after FRA rule was framed. The process of formation of different committees from Forest Rights Committee (FRC) to State Level Monitoring Committee (SLMC) has been followed in different states to recognise the rights of forest dwelling communities over their land. But there has been a lot of discrepancy and negligence in implementing this Act in its true spirit by the government. Individual rights are recognised to some extent in many parts but community forest rights recognition is relatively negligible. Under this backdrop, the present study attempted to understand the situation of FRA implementation in eight selected states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and West Bengal. This study has covered a total of 400 villages (50 villages from each state), 219 gram panchayats (GPs) distributed over 51 blocks of 26 districts in eight states of India (AP, Gujarat, Jharkhand, MP, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and WB).