Forest Rights Act

Background and evolution

For more than a century, forest laws in India treated forests as state property and the people living in them as encroachers. The Indian Forest Act of 1878 and later 1927 consolidated government control, and reservation of forests often ignored the customary rights of Adivasi and other communities to cultivate, graze, collect produce and worship. After independence, protected areas and development projects continued to displace forest dwellers. Settlements of rights were incomplete, so many families lived without any legal title to land they had used for generations.

Movements of forest communities, campaigns by activists, and concern over eviction drives in the early 2000s led Parliament to pass the Forest Rights Act in 2006. Its preamble acknowledges a "historical injustice" done to forest-dwelling communities. The Act was framed to secure tenure and livelihoods while also giving communities responsibility for conservation of biodiversity.

Key features and provisions

• Eligible people: Forest Dwelling Scheduled Tribes in areas where they are scheduled, and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers who have resided in forests for at least three generations (75 years).
• Individual rights: to hold and live on forest land under cultivation, up to a maximum of 4 hectares.
• Community rights: grazing, fishing, access to water bodies, collection and sale of minor forest produce such as bamboo, tendu leaves and honey, and rights of nomadic and pastoral groups.
• Community forest resource rights: to protect, regenerate, conserve and manage community forests.
• Habitat rights: for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.
• Procedure: gram sabha receives claims and passes resolutions; sub-divisional and district level committees examine and approve.
• Critical wildlife habitats: areas in protected areas can be kept inviolate only after scientific determination, consultation and resettlement with consent.
• Development facilities: diversion of up to one hectare for schools, dispensaries and similar facilities.