The Supreme Court on Friday appointed former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai to head a special committee that will scrutinise orders passed by authorities in Tamil Nadu under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA), even as it came down hard on the state government for its prolonged failure to initiate the statutory process to identify and adjudicate the claims of forest dwellers in the ecologically sensitive Agasthyamalai landscape.
A bench of justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta constituted the committee, comprising Justice Gavai as chairperson, an officer of the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) and Tamil Nadu’s principal chief conservator of forests, to oversee the determination of claims by Forest-Dwelling Scheduled Tribe (FDST) and other traditional forest dwellers (OTFD). The committee will scrutinise the orders passed by competent authorities under the FRA and submit its findings to the court in a sealed cover. The committee, in turn, has been asked to complete its scrutiny within two months of the expiry of this outer deadline. The latest proceedings arose from competing claims over the application of the FRA to people residing in or cultivating land in the Megamalai region.
The court directed the state to complete the constitution of the remaining Gram Sabhas within 30 days and conclude the entire process of inviting and adjudicating claims through the statutory three-tier mechanism within five months of their constitution. Criticising the state for its inaction, the bench observed that the process under the FRA had remained uninitiated for years even after an interim stay imposed by the Madras high court was vacated by the Supreme Court in 2016. “It is clear that the State Government is primarily responsible for the delay in the process of receiving, identifying and adjudicating the claims under the FRA, 2006. The directions came in proceedings concerning large-scale encroachments in the Agasthyamalai landscape, where the court had, in its May 29 judgment, ordered a structured and time-bound process for eviction, rehabilitation and ecological restoration.
“Apparently thus, the process under Section 6 was never initiated for years even after the lifting of the stay and seems to have been triggered only after this Court took suo motu cognizance of the prevailing situation,” it said. The bench added that the state appeared to have “woken up” only after the court directed the removal of encroachments from the Srivilliputhur-Megamalai Tiger Reserve and other reserved forests in the Agasthyamalai Biosphere. Before this Court took cognizance of the encroachments in the forest area, even the Gram Sabhas had not been constituted,” said the bench, granting the state what it described as a “last opportunity” to complete the exercise.
