Tribal Eviction: No intervention or survey till June, says ministry of tribal affairs

NEW DELHI: A month after the Centre initiated an exercise to gauge the number of forest dwellers who could face possible eviction following a Supreme Court order, it has decided to go slow and wait for government formation before taking any step.

On March 6, the ministry of tribal affairs had asked state governments to check 1.95 million rejected forest rights claims on the ground within a fortnight. The state government had been provided with a format and asked to check how many forest dwellers did not have rightful claims and could face eviction.

“There has been no movement on this. We have decided to hold off any such survey or intervention till June,” Deepak Khandekar, secretary, tribal affairs, told ET. “We have decided to postpone any policy decision on this sensitive issue for the time being. From the Supreme Court side, the states also have time till July.” Khandekar said no state has sent a report so far. The ministry had been pushed into action after a February 13 interim order of the Supreme Court to evict tribals and other traditional forest dwellers whose claims had been rejected under the Scheduled Tribe and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. The court later put eviction on hold.


This had proved to be a political hot potato especially before the parliamentary elections. Across the tribal dominated Schedule V area states, the BJP government was criticised for not representing the case properly in the Supreme Court. Politically, BJP feared any eviction or a survey to gauge the extent, even ordered by the top court, would have meant antagonising a constituency, which it had successfully weaned away from Congress.