Tribal Groups Seek `pro-people' Changes in Tribal Bill
Present Bill will not undo the "historical injustices" to us Timber and poaching mafias plundering the forest wealth - Tribal groups.
NEW DELHI: Hundreds of indigenous groups from the tribal-dominated States staged a dharna here on Wednesday, demanding "pro-people" changes in the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Rights) Bill, 2005. The groups from Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, led by leaders of the Lok Sangharsh Morcha, said the present Bill would not undo the "historical injustices" done to them.
Tribals and other forest dwellers were undergoing trauma and tribulations. They have been debarred from their traditional lands and forest produce, declared encroachers and treated as disposable population by various developmental projects since Independence, the activists said.
"The UPA Government, in accordance with its national common minimum programme (NCMP) has commendably acknowledged the historical injustices done to the tribal people. But, in a fashion characteristic to all previous governments, it is now diluting or destroying the very purpose of the bill by fixing 1980 as the cut-off date for conferment of land rights," the Morcha leaders said. Excluding all non-tribal forest dwellers from the ambit of the Bill, thrusting a land ceiling well below the prevailing norms, and desisting from giving any categorical commitment against eviction and displacement without any promise for rehabilitation to the displaced would not help the tribal people, they argued.
