Odisha News Insight


Odisha Govt fails implementing Rights Acts enacted from 2005

Odisha
By Odisha News Insight 1,094

Odisha Govt fails implementing rights acts enacted from 2005Bhubaneswar, June 4: In a press meet held on 3rd June 2015 at Lohia Academy, Civil Society Organizations alleged that Forest (Recognition) Rights, 2006 has been converted into land distribution scheme by the BJD Govt. in the State.

Civil Society Organizations working on different issues and monitoring the activities of the BJD Govt. in the State had reviewed the acts of the Govt. over last 14 years on last 31st May at Lohia Academy.

Giving its report card on BJD Govt. Civil Society has said that “the biggest achievement of the BJD Govt. is lunching populist schemes in the State and successfully managing vote bank and the biggest failure is failure to implement the rights acts enacted from 2005 in the State.” “The failure of the Govt. can also be counted from bigger scams like Chit Fund, Mining, Land allotment, Dal purchase and loot of NREGA funds etc in the State”

Giving its Report Card on the implementation of historic FRA, 2006 in the State, Civil Society said “When the FRA, 2006 recognizes the pre- existing individual and community rights over forest land and forest, in last 7 years of its implementation, Govt. of Odisha used the Act as Land Distribution Scheme in the State. While the Govt. is claiming to be the No.1 in distributing highest number of Individual Forest Rights(IFR) titles (3,44.430 by 30th April 2015) in the whole country, the fact is that in maximum cases, IFR titles have been recognized without demarcation of the occupied forest land leading to serious conflicts in the coming days. In the hoard of issuing of highest number of titles, It has also issued IFR titles over non-forest land. One can find more discrepancies in those districts where maximum IFR titles have been issued like Kandhamal, Keonjhar, Nabarangpur,Gajapati, Malkangiri, Koraput and Mayurbhaja etc. When up to 10 acres of forest land can be recognized under FRA, the Govt. of Odisha is consistently limiting the average forest land recognized under IFR to 1.58 acres only from last 2009. In the whole implementation of the Act, the Bureaucrats have played arbitrary role bypassing the empowered Gram Sabha. Govt. of Odisha also openly bypassed the 2/3 quorum of the Gram Sabha.”

Besides, Civil Society has identified the following issues in the FRA implementation in the State;

  1. Despite Gram Sabha’s recommendations, all most all IFR claims of Other Traditional Forest Dwellers(OTFDs) were arbitrarily rejected by officials of Sub-Divisional Level Committee(SDLC). Even Govt. Officials have arbitrarily put the blame of rejection of IFR claims upon the Gram Sabhas in case of 91,504 cases.
  2. of Odisha has failed to recognize the Community Forest Rights(CFR) in the State which is very important one. Besides, it is continue to mislead the public of Odisha also to the MoTA over the CFR titles distributed and total forest area recognized under CFR. While the State Level Monitoring Committee(SLCM) had reported in March, 2015 the total CFR claims filed was 12,500 in the State and 3,474 CFR titles were distributed over 1,80,163.50 acres of forest land, but in April, 2015 , the same SLMC said that the total CFR claims filed in the State is 6572 and only 1511 CFR titles have been issued over 97,830.91 acres of forest land.
  3. Despite provision under FRA and Guidelines issued by MoTA on 8th Nov, 2013 for the identification and conversion of 000’ of forest and un-surveyed villages falling in the reserve forest area in the State, Govt. of Odisha has failed to convert a single forest village into revenue village in the State.
  4. While the FRA has made the KL Pluckers owner of the Kendu Leaf, the Govt. of Odisha illegally continue to loot the around 9 lakhs KL Pluckers families in the State by eating around 80% of the profit earned form KL business in the State.
  5. of Odisha has also violated FRA and MoEF order of August, 2009 in which recognition of forest rights and consent of the Gram Sabha is mandatory before diversion of forest land for non forest uses. The SDLC who are supposed to be the protector of the forest rights have become instrument at the hand of the Private companies and are seriously engaged in producing forged gram sabha resolution for the diversion of forest land.
  6. of Odisha is also illegally promoting VSS/JFMC through “Ama Jungle Yojana” which is contradictory to FRA and dividing the community people at the Gram Sabha level.

Besides, Civil Society Organizations reviewed the achievements and failures of BJD Govt. in various  fields like  social  security, employment generation, agriculture, health, education, disaster management, governance, RTI and  Human Rights which directly concern the people at grassroots level and have produced report card.

Among others who raised the various issues in the review meeting are Prafulla Samantara, Ravi Das, Pradip Pradhan, Anial Pradhan, Gaouranga Mohapatra, Biswajit Mohanty, Manohar Chauhan, Ashok Mallik,  Debendra Sutar, Shaik Abdulla, Manoj Jena, Mira Kinnar, Sudarsan Chhotaray, Ashok Nanda, Ranjit Patnaik, Sudhir Mohanty, Sripati Singh, Bimal Kumar and Khirod Rout etc

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