The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Rights to tribals by June

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Sunday, Mar 02, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Rights to tribals by June

Staff Reporter

Sangaredy: Even though the district has no reserved forest and many tribal communities live in tandas close to the forest land, the district administration hopes to provide recognition of individual and community rights by June, just in time for the kharif season. The right-holders could then go ahead and cultivate the lands. As a prelude to that, formation of all the Forest Rights Committees (FRC) under the Forest Rights Act-2006 (The ST and other traditional Forest Dwellers Act) is expected to be completed by mid-March. As stipulated by the Act, the gazette publication of names of the dwellers should be done within 90 days of the submission of final lists.

The process of providing recognition of rights of the forest dwellers under the Act has begun with the identification of over 145 forest interface villages in all the three divisions of the district. Explaining the status of implementation of the Act, Joint Collector Ramshankar Nayak told The Hindu the newly formed FRCs now have started organising gram sabhas to finalise the claims of individuals of that particular panchayat. However, each FRC constituting ten to fifteen members should have to physically visit each habitation to ascertain the veracity of the claims with help from.

Each Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) who is the divisional committee chairman has been told to prepare and submit road maps for formation of committees and organisation of special gram sabhas. So far, Medak division has submitted its plan.

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Andhra Pradesh