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Journalism of Courage
The Supreme Court has issued notices to the Union Government and the states on a bunch of petitons challenging the Constitutional validity of the Forest Rights Act which permits allotment of forest lands to tribals.
Responding to the contention of two petitioners, who claimed that ‘land’ is a state subject and the Parliament cannot distribute land, the apex court issued notices to Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ministry of Tribal Affairs and the Cabinet Secretary, among others.
The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, seeks to recognise and gives forest rights, including forest land, to Scheduled Tribes and traditional forest dwellers. It was notified this January after a protracted battle between the wildlife experts and tribal activists.
There have been a total of six petitions filed since the Act was notified — the other four being in the high courts of Madras, Bombay and Andhra Pradesh.
The first petition, filed by Bombay Natural History Society, had raised 23 questions on the implementation of the Act. Apart from the legal validity of Centre distributing land, it also pointed to several ambiguities in the Act that will make implementation next to impossible.
The second petition is by a conglomerate of wildlife organisations — Wildlife First, Nature Conservation Society and Tiger Research and Conservation Trust. Like BNHS, they have challenged the legal and Constitutional validity of the Act. They had even aruged that it violates the Fundamental Rights of the petitioners guaranteed under Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution, as it is against the principles of sustainable development.
Meanwhile, the ‘Campaign for Survival and Dignity’ has condemned the petitions. In a statement issued after the court directions, they said: “The petitions show a deliberate effort to distort, obfuscate and confuse the issues in the Act. They paint this Act as a land distribution measure that will result in forest destruction, whereas the law is very clearly concerned with resources and rights that are already being exercised — that is, no land is being distributed, and no one will receive rights to any land that they are not already cultivating as on December 13, 2005.”
