Unsettled forever

Over 50,000 tribal people moved out of Chhattisgarh in 2005-06 to avoid violence between state-backed civilian militia Salwa Judum and Naxal sympathisers. They settled in the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and now, wielding a lesser-known clause of the Forest Rights Act, are demanding land at their current place of stay

- SHUCHITA JHA

Over 100 tribal people, who have moved from Chhattisgarh to neighbouring states since 2005, participated in a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on April 6, demanding that they be given land where they are living

I DO NOT want to return to Chhattisgarh," says Dudhi Ganga. "Fearing for our lives, my parent and I ran away 15 years ago after seeing Salwa Judum gun down three people in our village, branding them Naxalites. We left our land and animals, and settled in a forested area of East Godavari district in the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh," he adds.

Ganga is one of the 109 tribal people who participated in a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on April 6, demanding that they be given land at their current place of stay. All of them originally belong to Chhattisgarh and moved to Andhra Pradesh (some ending up in Telangana after the state's bifurcation in 2014) to avoid violence by Salwa Judum, a state-backed civilian militia formed in 2005 to curb the Naxal movement.

"Overall, some 55,000 tribal people left Chhattisgarh in 2005, as per an estimate by a collector of the affected district, due to the violence. They must be compensated with land wherever they are," says Shubhranshu Choudhary, founder of The New Peace Process, a nonprofit working for tribal rights in Chhattisgarh, and organiser of the protest at Jantar Mantar. "This can be done under a somewhat lesser-known Section 3(1)(m) of the Forest Rights Act (FRA)," he says.