Today the Supreme Court heard the cases against the Forest Rights Act. The Central government chose not to argue on the main question of evicting people, but instead just pointed out that due process have not always been followed, in response to a question from the court. Seven states have not yet filed their reply affidavits.

The Court hence directed that the State governments who haven’t filed replies should do so within fifteen days and the matter will next be heard on September 12th.

The Court also directed state governments to supply information about rejected claims to the Forest Survey of India by August 31st. We hope this question is challenged in the next hearing, as this reliance on satellite imagery is not in accordance with law and is dangerous (see last question here).

The order putting evictions on hold continues – and any State government attempting to evict people on the pretext of this case is not only violating the law but also the court’s order.

We are disappointed that the petitioners’ attempt to distort both the law and the facts has still not been fully challenged and the eviction order is still only “on hold”, as opposed to being withdrawn. This order emerged out of the Centre’s failure to defend the law in 2017 and 2018. We and many forest communities of this country will continue to fight for the Central government to do its job in court, defend the law and have this order withdrawn.

Campaign for Survival and Dignity

The Supreme Court did not hear the case against the Forest Rights Act today due to other matters. This delay is not bad news in itself, but even though the Court specifically put evictions on hold on February 28th, there have been threatened and actual evictions across the country. Moreover, so long as the order is only “on hold”, this kind of misuse will continue, and the spectre of mass evictions being ordered again will also hang over millions of tribals and forest dwellers. It is the constitutional duty of governments – particularly the BJP government at the Centre – to ensure that this case is dismissed. The silence of the Centre in 2017-2018 ensured that this situation arose. We call upon the government to present the Court with the true picture – that this is a historic legislation for the rights of millions of people and a democratic step forward for genuine conservation. To know more, see our explainer on this ten year old case.

On July 22nd, tens of thousands of tribals and forest dwellers held protests across India (on the call of the Bhumi Adhikar Andolan). Climate change organisations from around the world have condemned the Indian government. And soon, the Supreme Court is likely to hear a case in which it had earlier told State governments to evict millions of tribal and forest dweller families. The order was subsequently put on hold.

But what is all this about?

Why was the Forest Rights Act passed?

Millions of people have lived in and near India’s forest lands for centuries, but until 2006 they mostly had no legal right to their homes, lands or livelihoods. India’s forest laws followed a colonial model that empowered government officials – forest officers – to decide all questions relating to forests. This resulted in a situation where forests are destroyed merely based on the signature of a few officials in Delhi, while tribals and forest dwellers are subject to harassment, evictions, etc, on the pretext of being encroachers in their own homes. Torture, bonded labour, extortion of money and sexual assault are all extremely common. The situation is so bad that in 1989 the then Commissioner for SCs and STs, in his 29th Report, had said that “The criminalisation of the entire communities in the tribal areas is the darkest blot on the liberal tradition of our country.”

It is not an accident that tribals are the poorest communities in India. More background on this is here.

What does the Forest Rights Act say?

Following nationwide protests, in 2006 the Forest Rights Act was passed. It put in place a three stage process by which the rights of tribals and other forest dwellers were to be recorded and recognised. It listed thirteen types of rights, including rights over land being cultivated, rights to non-timber forest produce, and most crucially, the right to protect and conserve forests (which no Indian law had ever recognised as a right before). Details of these rights can be found here.

How does the Forest Rights Act help conservation?

The FRA changed the old system, where only officials had decision making powers, to one where officials should be accountable to the people they are ostensibly meant to serve.  Using its historic provisions recognising forest dwellers’ right to conserve, the Forest Rights Act has been used by communities around the country to challenge tree-felling, fight commercial plantations in the name of compensatory afforestation, oppose ecologically destructive projects and consequent air, soil and water pollution, and regenerate biodiversity. The Act has been hailed by Indian wildlife experts, international conservationists and conservation scientists, by groups fighting climate change and by other movements around the world as a step forward for both social justice and conservation.

What is the Supreme Court case about?

In 2008, retired forest officials and their associations filed six cases in six High Courts (that were cut and paste copies of each other) and two groups of wildlife NGOs filed cases in the Supreme Court. All of these cases sought to have the Forest Rights Act struck down as unconstitutional. More details on what the petitions are asking for can be found here.

What did the Court order in February and why?

In early 2016, the petitioners stopped asking for the Act to be struck down and instead began demanding that those forest dwellers whose claims had been rejected should be evicted (this is a misleading claim, see next question). After initially opposing this in court, the BJP government chose to remain silent for two years. As a result, in February the Court ordered the eviction of all rejected claimants. This would have affected over nine million people.

The order was condemned by conservationists, forest dwellers’ movements, opposition parties, and several United Nations special rapporteurs for human rights.

Why did the Court put its order on hold?

After nationwide protests, the government finally went back to the Court and pointed out that the petitioners are deliberately distorting facts (more details here). In reality, the Centre admitted, most rejections of claims have been illegal. But instead of asking the Court to take back its order, the Centre only asked for it to be “put on hold.” The Court did so and asked State governments to report on how they had rejected claims.

Despite the court putting its order on hold, some States continued to try to evict people, leading to clashes in Madhya Pradesh, Telengana, Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere.

What is going to happen when the case is heard next?

The Court will, most likely:

• review the replies by State governments
• hear applications from different groups seeking to be heard in favour of the FRA, including senior conservationists and academics, national adivasi and farmers’ organisations, and others
• hear whatever the Central government wishes to say, if anything
• hear the petitioners’ attempts to make satellite imagery into the centre of their case (see next question below)

The Court may choose to keep its earlier eviction order on hold, to withdraw it, or to lift the hold, which will again place more than nine million people in danger of eviction.

What is all this talk about satellite imagery?

The petitioners and some forest officials have long been claiming that satellite images both show “forest destruction” and should be used to verify if a person claiming forest rights actually had them. This is a deliberate misconception.

In reality, satellite images:

• Are easy to distort, since everything from seasonal changes to lack of ground truthing can lead to misleading conclusions (here’s a striking recent example)
• Have nothing to do with most of the rights under the Act, such as non-timber forest produce, grazing, etc., which won’t show up on satellite images anyway
• Cannot even be used to verify land rights, since a person may choose to leave land under their occupation fallow for some time, may grow fruit trees or other tree crops, or may have had trees illegally planted on their lands

As a result, in 2013 the Gujarat High Court had held that satellite imagery can be used as one among several forms of evidence, but cannot be made a mandatory requirement for recognition of forest rights.

Friends,

Below please find a joint letter that was sent to the BJP government today by four national platforms of adivasi and forest dwellers’ organisations.

The government is trying to use two routes – a backdoor route through the Supreme Court  and a front door route through proposed amendments to the Indian Forest Act – to condemn crores of tribals and forest dwellers in the country to destitution and extortion, brutality and eviction by forest officials.

The government is also enabling large-scale corruption by ensuring bureaucratic and non-transparent control of tens of thousands of crores collected in the name of afforestation and “development of mining-affected areas.”

The letter condemns these actions.  Both these platforms and many others have planned mass protests and struggles around these issues in July and August.

Campaign for Survival and Dignity

The Supreme Court’s February 28th decision to put its eviction orders on hold may have led the BJP-led government and other powerful forces to believe that the problem was over, and they can go back to sabotaging people’s rights as before.

Over the past week, many tens of thousands of people have poured on to the streets to show them that that’s not true – and forest dwellers will not take the assault lying down.  We have assembled photos of some of these protests and will add more in a second post as they come in (protests in Orissa, Maharashtra and elsewhere are planned in the coming few days too).

We haven’t included photos of the March 5th Bharat Bandh protests, which took place across the country.

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Regarding claims being made by the petitioners, please see note at the bottom.

Today, in a step forward for millions of forest dwellers who were living in fear and uncertainty, the Supreme Court put its order of February 13th – in which it had directed the eviction of over a million claimants for forest rights – on hold. The eviction order was the direct result of the BJP government’s failure to argue in defense of the Act at all for the preceding four hearings. Indeed, the Court itself asked the Solicitor General, “Why were you slumbering for so long? Why didn’t you argue about any of this earlier?”

The reality is that the Central government only filed this modification application after a nationwide outpouring of outrage, including mass protests in Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and other parts of central India, the “wave of struggle” announced up to March 10th, and so on. The Congress party also directed its CMs to act. Even the RSS’ own affiliate, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, joined the protests.

Moreover, the Indian and world wildlife conservation communities joined hands against this order – more than a hundred senior conservation biologists and experts, from organisations and institutions around the world, have signed a joint statement describing the planned evictions as a “huge setback for conservation in India.”

It was only after all this that the government realised it could not get away with what senior opposition leaders had earlier described as a backdoor attempt to scuttle the Forest Rights Act.

But the struggle is not over. The written order is not out yet, and what was said orally asks the State governments to report on the processes they have followed under the Act. The February 13th order has only been put on hold, not withdrawn. None of this would have arisen if the sabotage of forest rights – above all by the BJP government over the past five years – had not happened. Both the Central and State governments should know that forest dwellers will continue to fight for recognition of all of their rights. As happened this time, so in future, evictions or the denial of rights will never be accepted.

The struggle for a society and a forest regime built around justice, democracy and law – rather than corporate profit and state extortion – will continue.

NB: It has been brought to our notice that some of the petitioners in the case are claiming that the court has endorsed the use of satellite imagery for verification of forest rights claims. To our knowledge this is a distortion. While the final order is not yet out, from the oral discussions, both the present order and the previous one only asked the Forest Survey of India to provide satellite imagery for the ground position and not for verification.

Please find below a joint statement by some of India’s and the world’s most experienced conservationists and conservation biologists on the recent Supreme Court order.  More than three hundred signatories have signed, representing organisations, universities and institutions around the world.  Contrary to the notion that this order is somehow a pro-wildlife measure, they say

“We do not regard this order as pro-conservation. On the contrary, it is a real setback for conservation in India.”

Signatures continue to come in and we will update this post as they do. Other joint efforts by conservationists to respond to this situation are also underway.

STATEMENT FROM CONSERVATIONISTS ON SUPREME COURT ORDER

As conservationists and environmentalists, we are dismayed by the Supreme Court’s order of February 13th, 2019 to evict claimants under the Forest Rights Act whose claims have been rejected. This order came in a case filed by (among others) a group of wildlife organisations.

We do not regard this order as pro-conservation. On the contrary, it is a real setback for conservation in India. Forest dwellers have for centuries used and managed these forests that we are now considering to be valuable for conservation. The rights of local communities are an integral part of any sustainable and just model of conservation, as is now recognised in international law. Furthermore, the Forest Rights Act not only recognises these rights, it also legally empowers communities to protect their forests and wildlife as well.  It is the first and only law in India that gives those who live in and with forests the power to protect them. Since it was notified into force in 2008, the FRA has been a key weapon in the hands of communities across India, from Niyamgiri to North Bengal to Uttarakhand to Maharashtra, who seek to protect forests and defend themselves against corporate and government resource grabbing.

We do not agree with the claim of the petitioners in this case that their positions represent the interests of conservation. We do not agree with their claim that only “bogus claimants” will be affected by this recent order.  We find it particularly ironic that they went to court claiming that the procedures under this Act are ‘arbitrary’, and are now seeking to say that those same procedures are so effective and sacrosanct that millions of people should be evicted on the basis of their results.

It is incredibly difficult for local communities, who have long been oppressed, to secure their rights. We believe that those interested in conservation should be working to strengthen the transparency, community and democratic potential that the FRA creates – not seeking to attack forest dwellers or the law.

We reiterate the call of an open letter in 2014 to the petitioners that they should withdraw this case.  We join forest people’s organisations in calling upon the Central and State governments to seek the reversal of this unjust order, not least because it will cause immense harm to conservation.

Sincerely,

You can see an updated list of the signatories – now more than 300 in number – by clicking here.

हिंदी के लिए नीचे देखे

Today, the Campaign for Survival and Dignity, a national platform of adivasi and forest dwellers’ organisations, decided on a national Wave of Struggle over the next two weeks against the unjust attack on millions of people whose claims under the Forest Rights Act were rejected.

The Supreme Court’s order to evict over one million claimant families is the direct result of the BJP government’s decision to not say a word in court for the last four hearings. This is only the last step in this government’s consistent sabotage of this law, from May 2014 to the present.

Under the banner “BJP Sarkar Jawab Do!”, mass protests are planned from Feb 26^th to March 10th. Each will draw several thousand people:

• On February 26th, Jal Jangal Jeevan Bachao Sajha Manch will be holding a mass rally in Bhopal.

• On February 28th, Adivasi Chhattra Sanghatan and allied groups will be holding rallies in all districts of Madhya Pradesh.

• On March 3rd, Sarv Adivasi Samaj and allied groups will be holding a mass rally in Raipur.

• On March 3rd, a mass protest will be held by Adivasi Patel Sangh in Warla (Badwani district, MP).

• On March 5th, Jangal Jameen Jan Andolan will be holding a mass rally in Udaipur followed by indefinite dharnas in the tribal districts of Rajasthan.

• On March 8th, Adivasi Mahasabha will holding a mass rally in Godhra in Gujarat in which thousands of tribals from four districts will join. Subsequent protest will be held for north and south Gujarat as well.

• On March 8th or 9th, a mass rally will be in Bhubaneshwar.

• Meetings are being held over the next four days in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and mass protests will be held in all these States before March 10th.

Each protest will be accompanied by poster and awareness campaigns about the Central government’s role, and in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Nagar Haveli the rallies will be accompanied by padayatras in affected areas.

The protests will draw people’s attention to the attack on forest rights that has culminated in Supreme Court order. In particular we will demand:

• The Central government immediately act to reverse the February 13th order, by any means appropriate, and to ensure that all rejection of claims under the Forest Rights Act are reviewed through gram sabhas (not only by officials).

• The Central government ensure that, as per law, every village in forest areas in the country receives title to protect and manage their community forest resources, and to use their non-timber forest produce without any conditions or restrictions.

• All compensatory afforestation and other forestry funds (including Joint Forest Management) should only be utilised under the control of forest welling communities through their gram sabhas.

• Stop all diversion of forest land for corporate projects without consent of affected gram sabhas and without recognising rights.

• Ensure that all officials responsible for violating forest rights are prosecuted.