FOREST RIGHTS ACT: A NEW DAWN

FOREST Rights Act: Triggering the apocalypse of forest loss and fragmentation' by Praveen Bhargav, published in The New Indian Express on February 16, weaves an imaginary catastrophe gripping India's forests.

- CR BIJOY

FOREST Rights Act: Triggering the apocalypse of forest loss and fragmentation' by Praveen Bhargav, published in The New Indian Express on February 16, weaves an imaginary catastrophe gripping India's forests. The marauder, the article points out, is the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA).

However, the FRA, hailed as a historic flagship law incorporating inputs from across the country — from the forest-dwellers to the ecologists, and legal experts to seasoned administrators — was unanimously enacted.

The author of the article is a trustee of Wildlife First, the main petitioner in the Supreme Court case WP (C) No.109/2008. It challenged FRA as being beyond Parliament's legislative competence and for constitutional violations. In February 2019, the court ordered the eviction of nearly 10 lakh people whose FRA claims stood rejected even while a case on FRA's constitutional validity is yet to be heard.