The Supreme Court on Thursday giving a major relief for more than 10 lakh forest dwellers and tribals in various states, suspended its first order that could have resulted in the forcible eviction of tribals.
Supreme Court stays its Feb 13 order, directing several states to evict forest dwellers whose claims over traditional forestland have been rejected under the law. SC asks states to submit details of the process adopted to assess the claims. Next date of hearing is July 10, reported ANI.
The Top Court Bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra and Naveen Sinha directed the state governments to file affidavits giving details about process adopted in rejecting claims. The Top Court further posted the matter for July 10.
States to also inform Supreme Court about the procedure followed for determining the forest rights as well as whether the state level monitoring committees actually monitored the process or not. https://t.co/i2En40TUaC
— ANI (@ANI) February 28, 2019
The Top Court said that the Chief Secretaries of the state has to file the affidavits in this regards.
Earlier the Top Court had on Wednesday agreed to hear the Central Government‘s plea seeking withholding of its February 13 order asking 21 states to evict nearly 11.8 lakh forest dwellers whose claims were rejected.
The Centre had rushed to the top court for modification of the order saying the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 was a “beneficial” legislation and should be construed liberally to help “extremely poor and illiterate people” who are not well informed of their rights and procedure under the law.
After briefly hearing the matter, the bench said: “We stay and hold our February 13 order.”
Earlier on Feb 13, The Supreme Court of India directed the state governments to evict more than 1 million Adivasi families, claiming the forestland under the FRA( Forest Rights Act), before 27 July 2019.
READ: Supreme Court orders eviction of over 1 million Adivasi families
The Apex Court had on Feb 13 ordered the eviction across 16 different states. The states that were most likely to be affected are Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Odisha. These states together have almost 20% of the discarded ‘claim’ petitions.
Following the Top Court Verdict of February 13, President of Both Congress and BJP, Rahul Gandhi and Amit Shah respectively asked its Chief Ministers to file a review petition against a Supreme Court order that asked states to ensure eviction of tribals and forest dwellers whose claims to forest land were rejected.
I have spoken to all CMs of BJP-ruled states in the situation arising out of the Supreme Court’s order on the eviction of tribals living in forest areas. The states will be soon filing a review petition and care will be taken to safeguard the rights of our tribals and prevent eviction,” Shah tweeted earlier.
I have spoken to all CMs of BJP ruled states in the situation arising out of Supreme Court's order on eviction of Tribals living in Forest Areas.
The states will be soon filing review petition and care will be taken to safeguard the rights of our tribals and prevent eviction.
— Amit Shah (Modi Ka Parivar) (@AmitShah) February 25, 2019
While Congress President Rahul Gandhi wrote a letter to Chief Ministers of Congress-ruled states. In a letter to chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, Gandhi said in order to pre-empt large-scale evictions, they must file a review petition.
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