NEW DELHI: Activists of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity began a weeklong dharna here to seek the passage of the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forests Rights) Bill, 2005 in the current session of Parliament after incorporating the recommendations of the Joint Parliamentary Committee.

According to a statement issued by the Campaign: "It is now clear that neither environmentalism nor tribal rights nor social justice has anything to do with this Government's agenda. The Government's main goal is to protect the rich and the powerful - be they mining companies or the Forest Department - and to deny the rights of the poor."

Last year, after more than a century of struggle, the Central Government announced that it would pass a law to recognise the rights of forest dwelling communities. For the first time, the Government admitted that "historic injustice" had been done to forest dwellers.

But no sooner had this announcement been made than the Bill was attacked and a storm was generated in by "lies and distortions" about forests being "distributed" and "wiped out." The Government used the uproar as an excuse and retained or introduced clauses requiring that people should have occupied the same land for 26 years, all decisions on rights should be made by the same government officials who had denied them in the first place, and large non-ST forest dwelling populations should simply be excluded, the statement said.

On May 23rd this year, a 30 member Joint Parliamentary Committee considering the Bill gave in a unanimous cross-party report recommending that these dangerous clauses be replaced with much more democratic, and transparent measures.

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