One of the severest critique of the latest amendment to the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, came from the country’s former environment minister Jairam Ramesh, who has alleged that the Modi government has doomed forests with the law.
Incidentally, Jairam Ramesh heads Parliament’s standing committee on Science and Technology, Forest, Environment and Climate Change, which was by-passed by the Modi government to ensure passage of the bill.
Ramesh accused the government of making radical amendments to the Forest (Conversation) Act, 1980 and subverted the legislative process to get it passed when the Opposition was absent from Parliament over Manipur.
“A vast gap exists between its (Modi government’s) global talk and domestic walk on environment, forests, and the rights of Adivasis and other forest-dwelling communities,’’ Jairam Ramesh said, adding that the legislation should have been referred to the Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change which is headed by him.
“I had taken serious objections to this (amendment) and put them on record as well not once but twice. Instead, a Joint Committee of Parliament (JCP) was set up with a ruling party MP as its chair,’’ Jairam Ramesh said.
Jairam Ramesh is not the only opponent. Ecologists, experts, environmental law practitioners and a group of 100 ex-bureaucrats have all raised many concerns, foremost of which is the re-definition of forests, to mean only those demarcated as such in Central and State government records.
Thus, the concept of “deemed forests” introduced by the Supreme Court of India through a landmark judgement in the mid-1990s, called the ‘Godavarman Judgement’, by which the Apex Court had said any land that fits the dictionary meaning of ‘forest’ will be deemed to be forest land.
This particular change in the definition of forests could apply to Goa’s privately held lands which faced Forest Act restrictions by virtue of the Supreme Court’s Godavarman judgement definition as ‘deemed forests’. These restrictions will no longer exist under the Act, now amended.
Another amendment exempts land between five to 10 hectares in size from requiring forest clearances, which is particularly pertinent to the large ‘private forest’ holdings prevalent in Goa.
‘Goa’s Kumeri’ cultivators in trouble?
The amendment is bad news for Goa’s tribals, many of who have been living in forests carrying on agricultural occupations there, according to Odisha’s noted tribal rights activist, Y S Giri Rao, as such an amendment will take away the rights of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers.
Earlier commonly referred to as ‘kumeri cultivators’, who have been fighting for their rights to the forest land for decades, these forest dwelling tribes may face hurdles due to this latest amendment.
Also, the government will be exempted from taking concurrence from local governing bodies such as gram sabhas to grant clearances for projects, according to Giri Rao.
JPC got 1,309 objections
The JPC got 1,309 memoranda from various stakeholders, including 400 ecologists and 100 retried Indian Forest Service officers objecting to the proposed amendments.
However, the Bill got approved without any changes despite the widespread objections.
Also, a group of 100 former civil servants, styling themselves as the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), wrote to all MPs listing their concerns about the amendments, including the process followed to pass it. The amendment overturning the Godavarman judgement which defined forests as any piece of land that resembles the dictionary meaning of forest, was their concern in the main.
