Not Caring Two Hoots

In a scathing indictment of the state government for allowing private claims on forest lands in contravention of its order, the apex court asked if it had been sleeping for 26 years

- Atul Chandra

MINING versus rights of tribals over forest land has been a familiar story in Mirzapur district where unscrupulous forest officials allowed min ing leases in the reserved forest areas. Recently, the Supreme Court repriman ded the UP government for not having “any disciplinary control over” its forest officers in spite of its order fixing 1994 as the cut-off year for the process.

The dispute dates back to the 1980s when the UP government declared Dudhi and Robertsganj, two tehsils of Mirzapur district, as reserved forest land, affecting tribals who had been living there for decades. The Court had registered a writ petition on a letter written by an NGO, Banwasi Sewa Ashram, under Article 32, regarding the claims of tribals to the land in these tehsils.

On December 15, 1983, the Supreme Court gave directions for the appointment of a high-powered committee “for the purpose of adjudicating upon the claims of the persons belonging to Scheduled Castes and backward classes of their land entitlements as also to examine the hereditary and customary rights of farmers in those tehsils and to adjudicate the claims of tribals of their customary rights with respect to fodder, fuel, wood, small timber…flower, fruits and minor forest produce”. The committee found that “roughly one lakh eighty thousand acres” of land was in unauthorised occupation. The panel identified “433 villages lying south of Kaimur Range of the Mirzapur District to be relevant for the present dispute. Of these, 299 were in Dudhi tehsil and the remaining 134 in Robertsganj tehsil.