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The Central Government has moved an application in the Supreme Court seeking the stay of its order of February 13 regarding the eviction of people who have not established their claims as forest-dwellers under Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006(Forests Rights Act). The order would have led to the eviction of more than one million people from the forests.
Solicitor General Thushar Mehta mentioned the application yesterday before the bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Naveen Sinha, which agreed to hear it today.
On February 13, the bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Navin Sinha and Indira Banerjee directed states to ensure the eviction of all those persons from forestland whose claims under the Forest Rights Act were rejected. The Chief Secretaries of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telengana,Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have to explain to the Court why the rejected claimants have not been evicted and guarantee the eviction in all cases where rejection orders were passed on or before July 24.
In the event that the eviction is not carried out, as mentioned above, the matter would be seriously considered by this Court.
In the application, the Centre seeks amendment of the order so as to direct the State Governments to file detailed affidavits regarding the procedure followed and details of the refusal and to restrain the eviction until that time.
It says that it is uncertain from the affidavits already submitted by the state governments on whether the rejection orders were issued after due process, and whether appeal mechanisms have been properly exhausted. The Centre says that it has been periodically supervised the implementation of the Act by the state governments and has observed a high rate of rejections of claims, which are mostly due to erroneous interpretation of the Act and lack of awareness about the procedure for filing claims among grama sabhas.
In many cases, the reasons for rejections have not been communicated to applicants and they cannot prefer appeals, says the centre in the affidavit. Instances, where forest authorities were trying to evict the tribals without waiting for the decision of the appeal, were also noticed.
The application reads that according to the Act, the rejection of the claim does not ipso facto lead to the eviction of a tribal as per the provision of the Act. The applicant respectfully declares that the law is a beneficial piece of legislation and deserves to be construed liberally in favour of the FDSTs and OTFDs. The FDSTs and OTFDs are extremely poor and illiterate and are not well informed of their rights and procedures under the Act. They live in remote and inaccessible areas of the forest and find it difficult to support their claims before the competent authorities.
The direction comes in a batch of petitions filed by an NGO Wildlife First and few retired forest officials, challenging the validity of Forests Rights Act.
According to the petitioners, the Act has led to deforestation and encroachment of forest land. The petitions presented in 2008 also aim to replenish the forests from the possession of those persons, whose claims under the Forests Rights Act were rejected.
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