Ease of rejection

Launched to facilitate a review of rejected forest rights claims, Madhya Pradesh' web portal has led to speedy dismissal of applications

- SHUCHITA JHA

ANARSINGH TULSIYA, a 75-year-old member of Bhilala tribe in Madhya Pradesh's Sunod village, has applied for right to forestland under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, three times so far. The first two applications in 2010 and 2013 were rejected without Tulsiya being given a reason-a violation of FRA. The result of his third application, filed online through the MPVan Mitra portal in 2020, has been the same.

FRA gives members of Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers, who have been living and tilling the land in the area since before December 13, 2005, the right to file Individual Forest Rights (IFR) over the land. While hearing a case on the constitutionality of FRA, the Supreme Court, on February 13, 2019, directed the states to evict those claimants whose IFR had been rejected. This meant eviction of 1,191,324, or 1.19 million people, across 16 states.

After a widespread outcry, the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MOTA) filed an application before the Supreme Court for modification of the order, stating that there were instances where the states concerned had not strictly followed the rejection procedure. On February 28, 2019, the Supreme Court put the eviction order on hold. MOTA then discussed the order with the states concerned, which decided to review the rejected claims.

Madhya Pradesh, which has the country's highest tribal population, launched MPVanMitra web portal in September 2019 to allow claimants whose IFR had been rejected, reapply for the same, and to ease the process of submission for new claimants as well. On the website, applicants can file claims by creating their own user login identification and passwords. Officials, too, have their own login identifications and passwords, and process the claims online after reviewing the documents uploaded by claimants. The portal, however, seems to have allowed officials to unilaterally reject claims.