The State Government has converted the Forest (Recognition) Rights Act, 2006 into land distribution scheme in order to get credit at the national level, alleged representatives of civil society organisations in a meeting held here on Wednesday.
Giving its report card on BJD Government, civil society members said the biggest achievement of the BJD Government was launching populist schemes in the State and successfully managing its vote bank. “Failure of the Government can also be counted from bigger scams like chit fund, mining, house and land allotment, dal purchase and loot of NREGA funds,” they added.
On implementation of the historic FRA, 2006 in the State, activists said the State Government has used the Act as land distribution scheme in the State in last seven years of its implementation. While the Government is claiming to be the number one in distributing highest number of Individual Forest Rights (IFR) titles in the country, the fact is that in maximum cases, IFR titles have been recognised without demarcation of the occupied forest land leading to serious conflicts in the coming days, they added.
The activists alleged that the Government has also issued IFR titles over non-forest land. One can find more discrepancies in those districts where maximum IFR titles have been issued. “When up to 10 acres of forest land can be recognised under the FRA, the Odisha Government is consistently limiting it to 1.58 acres only from last 2009,” said the activists.
The civil society members said the bureaucrats have played arbitrary role in implementing the Act bypassing the empowered Gram Sabha.
The activists including Prafulla Samantara, Rabi Das, Pradip Pradhan, Anial Pradhan, Gauranga Mohapatra, Biswajit Mohanty, Sudarsan Chhotaray, Manohar Chauhan, Ashok Mallik, Debendra Sutar, Shaik Abdulla, Manoj Jena and Mira Kinnar attended the meeting.