CM to give many 'Adesh'and too few 'Adhikars'to tribals on March 3

At a time when the Supreme Court mandated eviction of more than 13,715 tribal families of Gujarat was stayed on Thursday, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani is set to distribute Adhikar Patras (land claim approvals) to tribal families in Songadh village of Tapi district on March 3. However, there’s a catch.

Out of the 3,256 documents that will be distributed, only 447 (13.72%) will be Adhikar Patras (Land Claim Approvals), the majority 2,809 (86.2%) will be Adesh Patras (favourable recommendations) for land rights, which are subject to further scrutiny and physical verification.

The amount of land in these claims are liable to be cut after physical verification and mapping.

According to district officials in Tapi- Vyara, the Chief Minister will be handing out these documents to nine families on the dais under the purview of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. Earlier, PM Modi was scheduled to distribute these documents but his programme was altered.

Activists denounce programme

Tribal rights activists termed the programme as grandstanding by the government. Praful Vasava of Adivasi Ekta Parishad, who led the tribal agitation against the Statue of Unity in Narmada, said, “The entire programme is an eyewash where both, the Union and State governments, led by BJP, first failed to defend the rights of Adivasis. Then they are trying to show themselves as messiahs by filing the review petition in the Supreme Court and by holding an event to hand out worthless pieces of paper.”

Speaking on difference between the two documents, Vasava said, “While the Adhikar Patra given to Tribals is that of cultivation right and not land ownership, it is still better than the Adesh Patra from which they can later cut parcels of land during physical verification. Further, the Adesh Patra is also useless as a document as the tribals cannot even get loans on its basis.”

BR Parmar, Joint Director of FRA at the Tribal Department, confirmed, “The Adesh Patra only says that land can be approved ‘conditionally’. It says that claims have been approved pending verification. It is only in the Adhikar Patra that the name of the claimant, his family and the size of parcel of land is mentioned.”

A total of 11,947 individual claims were received by the Tribal Development Department from 83 villages, since 2006, in Tapi district. As of February 28, 2019, V G Patel, Additional Collector and FRA Project Administrator from the Tapi-Vyara Collectorate, said, “A total of 8,104 Adhikar or Adesh Patras have been issued in the district.”

Criticising the government on its lack of will to give ownership of land to Tribals, Chhotu Vasava, the Tribal MLA of Jhagadia (Chhota Udepur) for the seventh consecutive term, told Mirror, “These are election gimmicks and nothing else. If this government that has been in power for more than 25 years wanted to give land to tribals, they would have written to the National Board for Wildlife to transfer some Forest Land to Revenue Department and then distribute it among the eligible families.”

What state govt says

Ramanlal Patkar, Minister of State for Tribal Development, told Mirror, “Many of these claims are known to be true through satellite imagery but we have not been able to complete their physical verification. We cannot give Adhikar Patras without verification.” Replying to activists’ accusations ofit being an election gimmick, Patkar said, “That’s not the case. The fact is we can allot land only after Forest Rights Committee clears a claim and then physically verified. But, we are trying hard to complete the process.”

No rejection of FRA claims in Tapi

Even as Tapi has one of the highest rates of approvals for claims under FRA, the most important part is that there has been no rejection of claims in Tapi since the Gujarat High Court order in 2013 mandated re-examination of all claims. Claimants from Sabarkantha, the Panchmahals, Chhota Udepur, Mahisagar, Dahod, Navsari and Valsad have been invited to participate in the event. However, claimants from nearby Surat and Bharuch districts have not been invited. There have been 732 rejections of FRA claims in Bharuch, 9,308 in Sabarkantha and 3,675 in Surat.