18,000 tribal families to get cheques today

The land ownership beneficiaries of Naswadi taluka will also get their titles after government cleared their claims.

Under the SPAY,state government gives Rs 45,000 to BPL families working as farm labourers or traditional craftsmen to build pukka houses.

However,the implementation of Forest Right Act 2006 has not been a rough ride for the state government. It has faced criticism from NGOs for rejecting 1.13 lakh out of 1.56 lakh claims for land under Forest Right 2006.

The Act provides for awarding ownership title to a person of a plot of land which he has been cultivating since 2005. To prove the cultivation of land,the government has agreed to accept satellite imagery as secondary evidence.

Accordingly,it had assigned Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics ,Gandhinagar,to prepare maps of forest areas.

However,the BISAG map have been found inaccurate in many cases and claimants have submitted maps downloaded from Google Earth. However,the matter of accepting Google maps as evidence is pending before the Gujarat High Court.

In Vadodara district alone,17,000 persons have claimed land under the

Act. However,the government has found only 7,000 of them valid.

It had issued 2,100 ownership titles at a previous function. Officials admit the 4,700 claims had been accepted recently.