Dissolve the Task Forces on FRA and PESA in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh

The Chhattisgarh Government, on 6th May 2026,  constituted the Task Force to ensure effective implementation of FRA and PESA in the state. Chhattisgarh is the second state after Madhya Pradesh who constituted such a body on 5th November 2024. Odisha too has been considering the setting up similar Task Force. Contrary to the claims of expediting implementation, these Task forces are actually a facade for the institutional subversion of the statutory, democratic and non-centralized framework of FRA and PESA– and indicate a broader strategy of techno bureaucratization aimed at political hijacking of these powerful legislations. Common to these Task Forces are key representatives of the Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (ABVKA), an RSS frontal organization along with range of bureaucrats and NGOs. The Task Force, illegally takes over the functions of the statutory bodies viz SLMC and overrides SDLC and DLC disabling them administratively for the next two years. SLMCs are not yet constituted in many states and where they have been they fail to perform their required roles and functions. Instead of establishing, activating and strengthening these statutory institutions, the State Governments are building a parallel institutional structure under the garb of effective implementation.

Moreover, both PESA and FRA which powerfully empowers Gram Sabhas in governance through direct democracy are being packaged as beneficiary schemes with targets, deadlines and funds deployed through a bureaucratic-political nexus. The Task Force Committee is not the only intervention. The Union Government’s schemes of Dharti Abha-Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan (DA-JGUA) launched in 2024 already formalizes this techno-managerial bureaucratic approach where the Gram Sabhas have been circumvented by parallel institutional structures such as FRA cells, PESA mobilizers and the technical expertise, digitization, and role of RSS affiliates, NGOs and forest bureaucracy.

The right wing has followed a strategy of infiltrating existing statutory institutions throughout the country by appointing officers/individuals who share their ideology. By constituting Task Forces, they have now begun a new strategy – setting up parallel structures (with their people at the helm) to render existing structures and statutory institutions defunct. The two flagship laws are now being subverted and hijacked by the RSS even as the rich natural resources are being securely conveyed to preferred business houses even using the new -normal method of suppressive- diversionary – electoral autocracy. The ruling government’s strong abhorrence to the concept of ‘Rights and Rights based approaches’ is already evident and so is the shift in nation’s economic policies and decisions to favour the crony capitalists.

The regime is gradually subverting these laws by hijacking the statutory institutional mechanisms to advance the hegemonic domination over Adivasi and forest dependent communities and their community resources and lands.

Campaign for Survival and Dignity condemns these interventions and demand . FRA and PESA emerged through mass struggle against the institutional and policy injustices, during colonial and post-colonial times, to decolonize and democratize governance and establish self-governance as envisioned under the Indian constitution. The ruling government must stop the hijacking the democratic frameworks of governance and dissolve these non statutory task force.

For more details see our statement on the same, attached below in English and Hindi.
– On behalf of the Convening Collective, CSD