Trends and Directions in the Implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act, 2006 after Twelve Years
The faculty members and research scholars of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai have been actively engaged in documenting and researching the nature, process and impact of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 across India. As part of ongoing work in the field of forest rights and governance, we have prepared a concise and comprehensive report distilling the emerging trends and directions in the implementation of Forest Rights Act in India.
This report builds on the work that TISS has collaborated with Community Forest Rights-Learning Advocacy (CFR-LA) group at the national and state level-especially in Maharashtra in preparing the Promise and Performance Report on Forest Rights Act After Ten Years in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
This report comes at a time when forest dwellers, civil society groups, grassroots organisations and NGOs are increasingly expecting the political regimes to support the rights of communities with legitimate tenure to the land or resource in question across India. Assurance by political parties to review the rejected claims in the aftermath of the Supreme Court of India’s order to evict the forest dwellers whose claims have been rejected has provided an impetus for forest dwellers to assert their rights over forest land and resources.
Several studies including TISS’s earlier work in the state of Odisha, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have documented the status of forest rights recognition and the reasons for ineffective implementation. This report, however, attempts to highlight and compare the nature and extent of implementation across states and how different states are placed in recognising forest rights claims and in addressing pending and rejected claims.