Wildlife lobby forced PMO hand on forest Act
Wildlife activists and NGOs, like World Wildlife Fund, opposed imposition of the Act's provisions on national parks and sanctuaries.
By Nitin Sethi, TNN |
NEW DELHI: This was supposed to be Congress's flagship programme meant to bolster the party's pro-poor credentials. The party's regional and tribal leaders were all buoyed about it and the allies had backed the move to the hilt. The Opposition couldn't find an excuse to oppose it.
All this should have seen the Forest Rights Act sail through and be implemented easily. But the influence and determination of a handful of wildlife activists, documents with TOI show, put the Act that found all-around political support on hold for three months, forcing the government to revisit and dilute its provisions.
But documents prove that various ministries and the PMO worked overtime while the Act's implementation was delayed to exclude the 600-plus national parks and sanctuaries out of the ambit of the Act.
Wildlife activists and NGOs, like World Wildlife Fund, opposed imposition of the Act's provisions on national parks and sanctuaries, arguing that the law would damage forests and wildlife. The Act is meant to restore traditional rights of tribals and forest-dwellers in these and other forests.
The fact that the lobby could force the government to revisit a legislation which had already been vetted at various levels and enjoyed the support of Congress leaders like Ajit Jogi, Jamuna Devi and general secretary Kishore Chandra Singh Deo is being seen as a reflection of their determination and leverage with the ruling coalition.
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The intense lobbying led the PMO, cabinet secretariat and ministries of forests & environment, tribal affairs and law to get into the pause mode. The project was finally launched three months after its original date of October 2 ��� when the government had planned a grand announcement of the pro-poor measure to coincide with Gandhi Jayanti.The environment ministry, which is headed by the PM, wrote in suggesting that people's rights in national parks and sanctuaries should not be vested till 8% of the forest land -��� covering all these 600-plus national parks and sanctuaries ��� was declared as critical wildlife habitats. Ironically, it claimed that if this was not done, it would be very difficult to resettle people outside these areas.
Even the ministry of tribal affairs, which is expected to be more sensitive to the interests of tribals, took the line that implementation of the Act should wait till all the national parks and sanctuaries had been declared "critical". The cabinet secretariat also chimed in, arguing that it would be "administratively" difficult to implement the Act.
It was the apprehension of huge unrest which finally put a wrench in the works of the anti-Act lobbyists. Law and order worry was the main reason why, unlike the ministry of environment and forests, both tribal affairs ministry and cabinet secretariat opposed the idea of putting parts of the Act on hold for one year. They disagreed with the environment ministry, arguing that it could foment law and order trouble because of the heightened expectations among tribals and others who stood to benefit from the law.
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The PMO also seemed to be in agreement over not delaying the project for long, and directed that identification of these areas where people would not get rights be completed at the earliest. If the fear of trouble on the ground was an important antidote to the manoeuvres of the influential wildlife lobby, the high-profile and celebrity activists found a roadblock in the Left which piled on pressure on Congress for delaying the Act.CPM politburo member Brinda Karat wrote to the PM in complaint. The government then took refuge in the General Clauses Act, as per advice of the law ministry, which allowed it to take advance action on any legislation pending its notification. Eventually, the Act was operationalised in January 2008 with the environment ministry setting up a committee to identify critical wildlife habitats with two of the strongest critics, Valmik Thapar and Mahendra Vyas, as members.
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nitin.sethi@timesgroup.comDownload
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