Bastar News Today: The forest rights leases distributed to the villagers in Bastar, Chhattisgarh are being misused. Due to this political game of distributing forest land for votes, thousands of acres of forest have been destroyed in Bastar. In the last 30 years, more than 400 settlements have come up in the forest area. Even now, the game of felling huge green trees, drying them, burning them and selling them is going on in full swing. The forest department is not taking any action against such people.
In fact, in view of the increasing population and the needs of the villagers, the landless residents of the forest area are being given forest land rights forms for farming. For this, a team of the Forest Department, District Panchayat, Revenue Department has been formed and there is a provision to give four hectares i.e. 10 acres of forest land to each landless person.
According to the rules, the villagers who have been given this forest land rights form, it is mentioned in it that the villagers will do farming on the forest land but will not cut the trees standing there, if they do so then action will be taken against them. Due to this provision, till now about 32 thousand hectares of forest land has been given to the villagers under the Jagdalpur forest area. By March 2019, 28, 350 hectares of forest land had been occupied in the Jagdalpur forest circle, on the recommendation of the committee, 16 thousand 754 people have been given individual and 694 collective forest rights forms.
Forests are being encroached upon for the past 30 years
According to the information received from the department, in the last three years, about 3000 hectares of forest land has been encroached upon. The process of giving them forest rights forms is also going on. Experts say that the process of encroaching forest land has increased rapidly in the last 30 years. The adult sons of those who have got the lease have started farming by occupying the land by talking about living separately from their father and have presented their claims through advocates.
Such villagers are told that they should show the remains of stove, hut, ashes, old clothes etc. on the forest land they want to occupy, only then their claim will be strong, many Sarpanchs and local public representatives are also active in this work.
Villagers are protesting against forest employees
Bastar’s Chief Forest Conservator RC Dugga says that the lease has been distributed to the landless people as per the rules of the previous government. However, the department is constantly receiving complaints that the forest rights lease holders are continuously cutting the standing trees, due to which the forests in Bastar are being damaged a lot.
Especially in the forest land area, old trees are being cut down, although instructions have been given to take action against such people under the Forest Act, but many times the forest department employees have to face the anger of the villagers. Although there are no problems in giving collective forest rights lease, but after distributing forest rights lease to landless residents, they violate the forest acts by ignoring all the rules.
However, in a meeting held in the capital Raipur during the tenure of the previous government, the forest department has given instructions to take strict action against those who cut the standing trees. And these instructions are being followed, but during this time, the villagers have to face opposition. Here, the forest department officials themselves also believe that compared to previous years, dense forests in Bastar are being cut down rapidly for forest rights lease.
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