The Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), which struggles for Forest Rights Act, 2006 and has been monitoring its implementation in the State, demanded immediate arrest of the forest officials involved in a tree felling case in Kamalapadar village of Gaisilet block in Bargarh district.
Notably, on March 4, hundreds of community people mostly women protested before the Collector’s office against the Forest Department for arresting five people of the village on the charges of cutting trees.
They alleged that the real culprits behind tree felling are the forest officials. A fact finding team from CSD went to Kamalapadaron on March 6 and interacted with the aggrieved villagers.
The CSD team found that the forest officials are the real culprit behind the alleged tree felling in the village. When the community people were collectively protecting and depending upon it for their basic needs, the Forest Department people including present ACF, Ranger, Forester and forest guards had organised meeting in the village on December 27, 2015 and motivated them to fell trees.
They felled around 10,000 with the help of tree cutter machines and had promised to share equally with the villagers. The Forest Department people took away around 25 to 30 truckloads of bigger logs of Sal and Piasal, Sahaj and Dhaura. But when they wanted to take the community share too on March 1, the villagers protested against it. Thus misusing their power against the villagers, the officials seized all the logs and arrested five persons of the village. They also threatened the community people to arrest more.
It is to be noted that based on the memorandum submitted by the Kamalapadar villagers, the district administration has formed an investigating committee under Padampur Sub Collector Bijay Kumar Rath. In its preliminary report, the committee has found involvement of forest officials in the alleged tree felling.
CSD submitted its report to the Chief Secretary (Chairman) and SCST Secretary (Nodal) of FRA State level Monitoring Committee (SlMC).