BHUBANESWAR: It was on August 9, 2023, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, the state government had launched the Mo Jungle Jami Yojana (MJJY) with a lofty goal of providing due rights to the forest-dwelling tribal communities under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, within two years. The deadline lapsed on Saturday, but the scheme seems to have failed to achieve its set targets by miles.
While the FRA is under implementation in the state since January 1, 2008, the scheme was launched by then chief minister Naveen Patnaik to bring absolute focus on transfer of rights and accelerate land ownership and access to forest resources both at individual (eligible Scheduled Tribe forest dwellers) and community levels.
The target was to extend rights over forest land to seven lakh tribal families across 32,000 villages in all the 30 districts and address rights across 35,739 sq km of forest area and 32,562 villages. However, the statistics present a dismal picture.
According to official reports on FRA implementation from 2008 till May this year, the government had received 7,32,530 individual forest rights (IFR) claims against which, 4,63,129 titles were distributed. This includes 6,32,636 claims till July 2023 of which, 4,57,238 were provided. During the implementation of MJJY, only around 5,891 claims were settled.
Similarly, 18,843 community rights (CR) claims were received from the implementation of the scheme till May 2025 of which, 4,880 CRs were distributed. Till July 2023, the government had got 9,351 CFR claims and settled 4,330. Just 550 claims were distributed under the MJJY scheme. As far as community forest resources (CFR) are concerned, government had received 17,000 claims in the last two years (from implementation of scheme till May 2025) and settled 4,110. Before July 2023, 6,110 claims had been received of which, 3,483 were settled. Under MJJY, only 627 have been covered.
This apart, forest area of only 4,648 sq km has been vested under FRA till the end of May this year, which is mere 13 pc of the estimated forest area that was to be covered. And, just 32 pc of the PVTG families have benefitted under IFR, the official data reveals.
The programme seems to have fallen on the wayside even as additional funds were provisioned under the state budget and support extended by the Centre under Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan (DAJGUA).
While ST and SC Development minister Nityananda Gond could not be reached for his comments, a forest rights activist, requesting anonymity, said work on implementation of the scheme began only around December 2023 and a few months later, the general elections were announced. “In 2024, there was a change in the government which has given no priority to the scheme. The state-level monitoring committee on FRA headed by the chief secretary has not even met once on implementation of the scheme,” he said.