The Hindu : Karnataka / Mangalore News : Tribal farmers apprehensive over Forest Department survey

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Friday, Jul 23, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka - Mangalore

Tribal farmers apprehensive over Forest Department survey

By Our Staff Correspondent

MANGALORE, JULY 22. Tribal farmers living in the protected forests of the Western Ghats have expressed the apprehension that they will be evicted from their settlements forcibly by the Forest Department.

P.N. Rajan, president of the Aranya Santhasthara Horata Samithi of Guruvayanakere, told press persons here on Thursday that the department was conducting surveys in over 98,000 hectares of revenue land in the forest areas occupied by tribal farmers.

He noted that the Forest Department had asked the Revenue Department to handover the revenue land within the protected forests to it. If this demand materialised, it was certain that the Forest Department would evict the tribal farmers, he said.

He, however, observed that the Legislative Assembly and the Council had unanimously passed a resolution on December 31, 2003, regularising the holdings of the tribal farmers. Following the resolution, the State Government had directed the formation of taluk-level committees to oversee the regularisation process, he said. While the committees had been formed in 42 taluks in the State, they were yet to be set up in the taluks of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, he added.

Mr. Rajan noted that the State Government had promised to regularise lands encroached upon by tribal farmers up to 1990. But the directive that gave effect to the formation of committees had stated that the cut-off year was 1980. This "anomaly" had to be rectified, he said.

He said 1,12,554 families had occupied 98,978 hectares of land in various districts in the State. Of them, 4,000 families were in Dakshina Kannada and 2,000 in Udupi district, and each family had an average of three acres.

Mr. Rajan claimed that the list of land holdings, change in pattern of land, and the type of plantations had been wrongly specified in the documents of the Forest Department. He urged the Government to take steps to rectify them.

He said that in the wake of the surveys and the notices being given to tribal farmers in Puttur, Bantwal, Kundapur, and Karkala taluks by the Forest Department, the tribal farmers were regrouping to counter the threat posed by the department. If the Government did not take action to stop the survey and withdraw the notices, the tribal people would launch a State-level agitation, he warned.

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